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Programming

Programming nirvana part 4: the repl

A repl is a very important tool in the arsenal of a programmer. It allows one to test bits and pieces of code and then assembling that into a running program. Examples of this includes the excellent firebug utility for firefox and various shells (like the python shell). There has even been tries to bring a repl to C#, but the languages is not at all designed for this purpose, so it’s a crude hack at best.

Often developing using the repl consists of a lot of copy pasting back and forth between then editor and the repl. Moving the repl into the editor makes this even less painful, but I would argue that in order to fully embrace a repl one has to have something like lisp, or a very good editor (that I havn’t seen yet). In lisp it’s very easy to take parts of a function and evaluation only that part simply by finding the right parenthesis and evaluation that. Using Emacs and SLIME it’s a simple two-key-gesture.

But one can take it one step further. Why not simply start your program as a repl, instead of adding a repl to your program. That way also the running state of the program can be determined. But in order for that to work, one has to be able to redefine functions without stopping the program. Clojure allows that, and it’s the key that makes it all work.

Programming in clojure is a process of organically growing your program in a bottom-up fashion where the running state of the program allows one to inspect, debug and fix programs all without shutting it down.

The best way to do this is to start up a repl in a seperate process and then to connect to that process, that way one can always disconnect and reconnect again when the need arises.

Categories
Programming

Programming nirvana part 2: be agile

In part 1 I made the very brief argument that compiling sucks. I really like that cartoon since there is a lot of truth to it. Compiling sucks mainly because it breaks flow. There has been several tries to fix it by lowering the time it takes to compile but in the end, it’s still the same loop: write, compile, “debug”.

There is another layer to it as well, one that dynamic languages doesn’t necessarily imply: Developing a program should be having a running program that can be used while it is being written. This is one of the pillars of agile programming. Step one in achieving this goal is to separate the UI from the backend. Web is a natural way to do this.

Django comes very close to achieving this with it’s automatic reloading on change, but the biggest problem is that it’s not able to automatically migrate the most basic model changes. On the other hand Django has many other things going for it so it is by no means a bad choice. But there might be a better one lurking in the dark.