Emacs Command Summary

I'm in the process of taking up Emacs again. I like vim a lot, but I think I would benefit from becoming more proficient with Emacs. I found this command summary that I think will be helpful.

Tabs versus Spaces

This article advocates using spaces for indentation in source code, and shows how to configure emacs and vi to accomodate this practice.

The State of Ruby on Rails '05

Slides, MP3, and OGG files are available for this talk. By the way, I went to a meeting of the DFW Pragmatic Programmers group last night, and one of the people there, Adam Keys, had just got back from RubyConf. He said he thought it was very worthwhile, and he had a good time there.

Practical Common Lisp

Following my friend's advice, I started reading Practical Common Lisp online. Then I decided to buy the print version after I got into a few chapters online. I think this book could lead to a revival of Lisp popularity. So much of the other stuff I had tried to read on Lisp made it hard to see how it would be used in real-world applications, but this book shows how it is a good high-level, high-performance general purpose programming language.

I saved the first paragraph of this post in May, and since then I have sold my house, and I've been living in temporary housing with most of my stuff in storage until the construction of my new house is complete. I packed up a lot of my books, and I've put my Lisp learning on hold. I hope to go back to it in a few months.

Meanwhile, I've been able to use some Ruby at work to do consolodation and summarization of performance metrics logs. Although this is the kind of work that Perl was originally created to do, I wanted to use Ruby as an opportunity to learn it better. I'm glad I did because I had to create some complicated data structures to collect all of the data, and I've always found such a thing messy in Perl. People who are more proficiant with Perl might do much better, but I had no problem building the objects I needed in Ruby.

Finally, I've posted before about Ruby web hosting. My previous hosting contract expired, and I moved my site to TextDrive. I've yet to try out Ruby on Rails on my new site, but I can say that I prefer the simple, straightforward tools that TextDrive provides for site management. I also like the fact that I have shell access. So, after a few weeks of usage, I so far have a positive experience with TextDrive.

Ajax

I just read Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications, which describes a web application approach used in some of the new web applications like Google Maps. The article is well written and worth reading if you are involved in web application development, or you're curious how these new applications work.

Lisp Notes from a Friend

I received an email from my friend, Chris Johnsen, which has a lot of good Lisp starting places:

You probably already know about On Lisp (which is out of print, and available as a free download, like you mention in your blog entry), but there is also a newer book on Common Lisp that has been getting some good reviews: Practical Common Lisp. It was just recently published, but the author has made arrangements to keep it freely available in a downloadable form, too (though I am sure he would also appreciate sales of the paper copies). PCL is an introductory book that covers most of Common Lisp while working up some practical code/projects.

I have a copy of Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp (which is not out of print, nor available as a free download). It offers a good introduction to Common Lisp. Some of the stuff is a bit more introductory than you really need (since you are an experienced programmer), but, in my experience, it is pretty easy to skip over the generic-programming parts while picking up the stuff that is unique to Common Lisp.

Also, don't forget to download a copy of the Common Lisp HyperSpec. If you are an Emacs user (or feel up to learning enough Emacs for the purpose), SLIME is a popular Common Lisp development environment for Emacs. I am not sure if it is packaged for Unbuntu, but getting it from CVS usually better anyway. SLIME also has some nice commands for pulling up entries in the CLHS while writing code and/or throwing stuff at the REPL.

SLIME Config

SLIME is an extension to Emacs to provide a development environment for Lisp. Dan Moniz posted a lot of information on how to configure it.

David Winer's Birthday

David Winer turned 50 today. He introduced me to blogging through his Radio Userland product, so it is only appropriate that I honor him in my blog. Happy birthday, Dave! May you have many, many, more!