short thoughts on D (like my twitter)

[Sean Kelly]

How about drdobbs.com?  Short-form entries are common there.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 11, 2011, at 4:33 AM, "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote:

> "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:isu59p$6sd$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> But I do have something that just happens to arguably be a lot like
>>> a blog and uses a blogging engine ;)
>> 
>> Gah, only weens use blogging engines!
>> 
>> I tend to just write my stuff as plain html files (like you can see
>> here). Sometimes I'll factor out common things, but I usually
>> don't venture far from plain text.
>> 
> 
> Heh, I have no idea what a "ween" is. I gotta (partially) agree though, I've 
> yet to find a blogging engine that I'm particularly happy with. The main 
> reason I didn't want to go with plain HTML though was because that makes 
> creating and updating navigation a pain. Maybe something like Ddoc could 
> take care of that, though. But I also like allowing comments (with captcha), 
> because then I actually get occasional feedback. And some people do like RSS 
> (more below...).
> 
> Of course, as you can see, it wouldn't take many features to make me happy. 
> And heck, I don't really even *need* the ability to update through a web 
> interface (although that does make it easier than reaching for my ftp app 
> and updating a bunch of files). So it would probably be pretty easy to just 
> make something myself that I'd be happy with. And I've been thinking about 
> doing that. But even as simple as it would be, it's just one more thing on 
> top my pile of pet projects that's already probably big enough for three 
> lifetimes...
> 
>> 
>> On the feed issue, that's something that doesn't bug me either -
>> I just keep a list of sites I like in my brain and check them
>> whenever I have nothing better to do. This perhaps only works
>> for me because I read so few sites!
>> 
> 
> I've tried out RSS feeds before, but ended up never really getting any use 
> out of them. I think I'm in the same boat as you. These D NGs are about all 
> I care about being up-to-date on, and I already check them directly anyway.
> 
> Of course, the ironly is despite never using them, I've actually implemented 
> RSS feeds for two different paid jobs (They were surprisingly easy). In 
> fact, I seem to have a pattern of occasionally winding up working on things 
> that I don't personally use: I've worked on a WAP/WML site (remember those?) 
> and dabbeld a little in SymbianOS dev with C/C++ and J2ME without having 
> ever actually owned a cell.
> 
> Anyway, I do like to at least provide an RSS/ATOM feed since it is useful 
> for some people.
> 
>> 
>> Some quick commentary on IFTI:
>> 
>> I actually discovered this by accident. Of course, I use IFTI
>> all over the place, like most D programmers probably do.
>> 
>> But, since the T argument was a default one here, I often didn't
>> specify it:
>> 
>> int a = cgi.request!int("a");
>> 
>> (Why use this instead of to!int(cgi.get["a"])? The request
>> implementation checks both get and post.)
>> 
>> Then, I started adding it, but still specified:
>> 
>> int a = cgi.request!int("a", 100);
>> 
>> 
>> One time, I just didn't write the template argument and it
>> still worked!
>> 
>> 
>> While it's a really mundane feature of D, I still felt a bit
>> of "hey cool" when it worked.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The to!enum was another thing I didn't expect. I thought it would
>> do the same as casting an int, but it works from name, which is
>> actually very cool. More user friendly, and that white listing
>> aspect is also pretty useful.
>> 
>> mysql.query("select * from users where " ~
>> to!string(cgi.request("field", Field.name)) ~
>> " = ?", value);
>> 
>> 
>> Building a sql string like that is fairly ugly, and normally, it'd
>> be /completely/ insane. You're just begging for trivially easy
>> sql injections.
>> 
>> 
>> But, thanks to the enum acting as a whitelist, you actually can
>> do that in D.
>> 
>> 
>> (Note that while I'm putting this in the web.d directory and talking
>> about cgi, lots of this stuff works on the command line too. Imagine
>> an enum for command line flags - converting is easy, you can
>> to!string one of the enums safely, you can list the arguments
>> using reflection, and final switch() can be used to ensure you
>> cover them all!
>> 
>> D's enums have a lot of hidden treasures.)
> 
> Hmm, so basically: The surprises are pleasant ones. Reminds me of a certain 
> other language... ;)
> 
> 
>