In this episode I will discuss the multiple evaluation issue, then I will show how macros can improve performance. Finally, I will give a practical example of how macros can be used to define a unit test framework.

A useful collection of observations about our profession.

Mark March 2-6 on your calendar.

Sun's focus on JavaFX has resulted in less progress on improving Swing development productivity. Has the shift of focus to JavaFX from Swing hurt the cause of client-side Java?

Yet another episode fully devoted to macros. I will discuss introspection, guarded patterns, literal identifiers, and a couple of common beginner's mistakes.

This episode is entirely devoted to Scheme macros from a personal point of view. Pattern matching is introduced as the fundamental mechanism on which macros are built.

Trying to do some simple file processing and strip blank lines, Andy stumbles through the "Ruby is supposed to feel natural" approach and just tries things. The conclusion - Python list comprehensions are still more flexible and powerful than any Ruby feature and inject is possibly the most misleadingly named function I've ever encountered.

Most build systems start out with dependencies, then realize they need language features and eventually discover they should have started with language design.

In this episode I will explain the meaning of the "code is data" concept. To this aim I will discuss the quoting operation which allows to convert a code fragment into a list of symbols and primitive values - i.e. converts code into data. Then, I will discuss the issue of evaluating data as code.

Headhunters are like travel agents, except that it's taking the web longer to make them go away.

It's been a good run, but the WYSIWIG editing facilities of Blogger have lured me away from Artima.

In this installment I pave the way to the heart of Lisp, i.e. to the famous *code is data* concept. In order to do that, I will have to introduce two fundamental data types first: symbols and lists.

Recently I have received a wonderful EeePC as a wedding present and I am very happy with it.

David Kreth Allen reflects on the fact that in his experience "people seem to favor artifacts and practices over principles." My reply follows:

The decorator mechanism behaves quite differently when you pass arguments to the decorator.