I’m looking for languages that have three properties: (1) Must have weak memory safety. The language is permitted to crash on an out -of-bounds array reference or null pointer, but may not corrupt or overwrite memory as a result. (2) Must have a transpiler from C that produces human-readable, maintainable code that preserves (non-perverse) comments.… Continue reading Looking for C-to-anything transpilers
Month: May 2020
Designing tasteful CLIs: a case study
Yesterday evening my apprentice, Ian Bruene, tossed a design question at me. Ian is working on a utility he calls “igor” intended to script interactions with GitLab, a major public forge site. Like many such sites, it has a sort of remote-procedure-call interface that allows you, as an alternative to clicky-dancing on the visible Web… Continue reading Designing tasteful CLIs: a case study
Two graceful finishes
I’m having a rather odd feeling. Reposurgeon. It’s…done; it’s a finished tool, fully fit for its intended purposes. After nine years of work and thinking, there’s nothing serious left on the to-do list. Nothing to do until someone files a bug or something in its environment changes, like someone writing an exporter/importer pair it doesn’t… Continue reading Two graceful finishes
Term of the day: builder gloves
Another in my continuing series of attempts to coin, or popularize, terms that software engineers don’t know they need yet. This one comes from my apprentice, Ian Bruene. “Builder gloves” is the special knowledge possessed by the builder of a tool which allows the builder to use it without getting fingers burned. Software that requires… Continue reading Term of the day: builder gloves