Some Nu Control Operators and Macros
Nu has had while and until operators for a couple of months now, but I had put off trying to support break and continue. This morning I realized that I could use an existing Objective-C pattern to add them easily (one of many reasons to take regular showers). The key was to use exceptions.
Sigils in Nu, and a question
I’d like to get some feedback on at least one aspect of Nu before anyone else becomes dependent on it: the use of sigils to indicate the type of a name binding.
The Nu World Order
I have been testing Nu by bootstrapping a small set of tools for software development. As they’ve matured, I’ve come to rely on them daily. Some of them required some thought and an occasional new feature in Nu, but none needed much code or time to develop. They aren’t as many-featured as some of their alternatives, but they are lean, clean, and do just what I need.
A smart preview
RubyCocoa and RubyObjC Q&A
Alex Payne sent me some great questions about Ruby, RubyCocoa, and RubyObjC. Since they seemed to be of general interest, he’s agreed to let me post them here with my responses.
A Glimpse of Nu
OK, I realize that until there’s a release, some people might consider this hype. But since a few skeptical readers have asked, “where’s the code?”, here’s the ubiquitous currency converter example, ported from Phillipe Mougin’s F-Script to Nu.
A Few Nu Details Emerge
I think that experienced programmers will find that Nu is surprisingly simple, mainly because there’s so little that’s really new about it. I reused a lot of existing Objective-C objects and idioms and drew nearly everything else from Lisp and Ruby. To me, Nu is as much a cherry-picked set of idioms as it is a language.
Here are some details.
Nu at the SF Ruby Meetup
Bosco gave me some time to talk about Nu at the SF Ruby Meetup.
BRIDGES and BEYOND – Tim Burks will present the latest twist on his RubyObjC bridge, a new language written specifically to be a glue language for Objective-C. In a lot of ways it’s like Ruby, but in one important way, it’s Lisp. You might say that it’s “Ruby with Parentheses”, but it’s called Nu, and it’s not just for the desktop. We’ll take an in-depth look at a blog server written in Nu that has a built-in Objective-C webserver, a Nu page templating engine, and an ActiveRecord-style ORM based on Apple’s CoreData framework.
Tuesday, September 18, 6pm.
