Categories
Programming

Predicate objects

“Cecil has predicate objects, which allow virtual “subclasses” to be defined carrying specialized methods that override their parent’s methods whenever some boolean predicate over the object is true. In this way, inheritance can be used to model time-varying and/or state-dependent properties of objects just like permanent properties of objects” (from the Cecil homepage)

Now, this is kinda interesting because I was thinking about something a bit like this about a year ago. And furthermore, Cecil has a tasty looking feature list – multimethods, optional polymorphic static typesystem (if you don’t supply static type information, typechecking is done at runtime), closures, and a Self-like classless object system.

And for something completely different. Someone stole the front quick-release from my bike, outside work today. They didn’t take the whole wheel, which was left neatly in place. They just removed the quick release mechanism. How annoyingly strange. Time to arrange a webcam pointing at my bike ..

Categories
Programming

Compilers galore

Just released, gcc 3.4 and a free download of the MS C++ compiler. Go figure.

I’ve just got one of these (the thing on the right, not the coke can) which is now quietly humming away running my mail server. It is currently sitting on a few bits of wood in my cupboard (the best kind way to silence a PC – put it somwhere else and knock holes through walls for the cables) but maybe I should do something like this with it?

I’ve twice recently had cause to refer to this article on “upside-down inheritance”, which discusses a very flexible method of composing functionality together, without some of the problems of a purely multiple-inheritance based approach.

(Oh, I forgot to add: this weblog is now syndicated over at LiveJournal)