Pupeno’s web site

I am trying to decide whether to use Pylons or Django. Both are frameworks for building Python web applications, but with opposing philosophies.
Django tries to be everything. It comes with its own ORM, its own template engine, its own everything. That gives you a nice developing experience because everything fits together and because very nice […]

Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation, the best book I’ve found on creating your own programming language is now available in paperback.
You can still get a free-of-cost copy of Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation at its original site. Actually, the book is now released under a Creative Common license, thank you Shriram!

This is, actually, old news. […]

I’ve made an image to describe Common Lisp method composition (or CLOS method composition if you want):

Download Common Lisp method composition.png or Common Lisp method composition.svg.

SCons is a program designed to replace make and autotools. SCons being a new tool is built with all the knowledge of what problem really this kind of tool should be solving, while make and autotools were built while discovering the real problem. It is natural to expect SCons to have a better design that […]

I recently stated what I believe is the biggest problem with Lisp, you can’t make programs with it. In my quest, my first solution is a very simplistic Makefile that does the job using cl-launch, a very interesting program that can turn a Common Lisp program into a Bash script. Other solutions are likely to […]

I’m not really going to talk about the problem with Lisp, but only a problem. And I’m not really going to talk about Lisp, but Common Lisp. So this post should be called "A problem with Common Lisp", but the current title is more catchy, isn’t it?
You are still with me? nice. Because I believe […]

Common Lisp macros feel like cheating. I’ve reached chapter 9 of Practical Common Lisp, where the goal is to build a unit test framework, and you can see right away how the patterns are easily abstracted out with macros. It’s so easy it feels like cheating.
Getting a text representation of the test code to be […]

I am doing some experimentation programming with C# for the .Net environment; using Mono, of course. My particular problem required a canvas to draw lines and paste images. Since I am using Gtk#, the obvious solution was to get a Cairo Context and work on it.
The documentation on Context shows an example that doesn’t quite […]

Note: Ported from old blog.
I am sick and tired of pieces of code arbitrary put together when they do very different things, so I shout:
Coders, please, make libraries!
I see this happening in every language with the worst cases when they are related to web. If you think you haven’t suffered from this, think again: The […]