Programming Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 16, 2023

• Noel Rappin ☛ Better Know A Ruby Thing Bonus: Contestants and Nesting

  Sorry for skipping a week or two – I was approving copyedits on the book that is now called Programming Ruby 3.3, because we now want to be proactive about the next release.

  Coincidentally, the copyedit review does relate to this newsletter. I noticed a particular code sample as I was going through the book again, and it highlights a feature of Ruby’s constant lookup that I didn’t discuss last time.

• Andy Wingo: whiffle, a purpose-built scheme

  Yesterday I promised an apology but didn't actually get past the admission of guilt. Today the defendant takes the stand, in the hope that an awkward cross-examination will persuade the jury to take pity on a poor misguided soul.

  Which is to say, let's talk about Whiffle: what it actually is, what it is doing for me, and why on earth it is that [I tell myself that] writing a new programming language implementation is somehow preferable than re-using an existing one.

  graphic designgarbage collection is my passion

  Whiffle is purpose-built to test the Whippet garbage collection library.

  Whiffle lets me create Whippet test cases in C, without actually writing C. C is fine and all, but the problem with it and garbage collection is that you have to track all stack roots manually, and this is an error-prone process. Generating C means that I can more easily ensure that each stack root is visitable by the GC, which lets me make test cases with more confidence; if there is a bug, it is probably not because of an untraced root.

• LWN ☛ gcc cobol status

  When in November we turn back our clocks, then naturally do programmers' thoughts turn to Cobol, its promise, and future.

  At last post, nine months ago, we were working our way through the NIST CCVS/85 test suite. I am pleased to report that process is complete. As far as NIST is concerned, gcobol is a Cobol compiler.

  For those keeping score at home, we're at 656 terminal symbols and 1636 yacc rules. Cobol is nothing if not a big language.

• LWN ☛ A GNU COBOL status update

  For the COBOL users out there, James K. Lowden has posted an update on the current status of the GNU COBOL compiler.

• Python

  • LWN ☛ Progress in wrangling the Python C API

    There has been a lot of action for the Python C API in the last month or so—much of it organizational in nature. As predicted in our late September article on using the "limited" C API in the standard library, the core developer sprint in October was the scene of some discussions about the API and the plans for it. Out of those discussions have come two PEPs, one of which describes the API, its purposes, strengths, and weaknesses, while the other would establish a C API working group to coordinate and oversee the development and maintenance of it.

    [...]

    In mid-October, Guido van Rossum announced PEP 731 ("C API Working Group Charter") as the first visible outcome of the meetings at the sprint. If approved by the steering council, it would establish a working group of the five PEP authors (Van Rossum, Petr Viktorin, Victor Stinner, Steve Dower, and Irit Katriel) to oversee the C API, and to steer it in ways that are analogous to what the council does for Python. There are multiple contentious issues surrounding the API, the PEP states, so there is a need for a dedicated group of core developers to work through them: ""The general feeling is that there are too many stakeholders, proposals, requirements, constraints, and conventions, to make progress without having a small trusted group of deciders.""