…is now available in PyProtocols CVS. So far this is just the CLOS “standard” method combination, with before/after/around/primary/call-next-method. But the infrastructure is now there to build any sort of qualifier-based method combination ala...
Yesterday, per my plan, I got in there and tore off some big chunks of the method combination work for generic functions. Just now, I was about to start in on the next phase, which was going to involve some additions to the current doctest to begin...
I’ve been thinking recently about my difficulties with “chunking down” – moving my mind from the general to the specific. I actually don’t have trouble with getting other people to do this; I know all the right questions to ask, and I don’t...
I’m beginning to think that predicate-dispatch generic functions capture something really fundamental about computation, or that at least they’re much more fundamental than interfaces or adaptation. As useful as interfaces and adaptation are...
I just refactored the access control rules framework in peak.security to use generic functions instead of adaptation. The result has less than half the code (about 140 lines versus the old version’s 480), and uses only one interface (versus eight in...
People sometimes complain about new Python features as being too tricky; sometimes I think they should look at what’s already in Python.As of version 2.3, the sort algorithm changed to use rich comparisons, specifically the __lt__ form. This...
Oliver Steele does a better job than me at explaining my position on optional type declarations. (Via Patrick Logan’s blog.)Anyway, he’s given a pretty decent summation of my interest in type declarations, even though he doesn’t mention adaptation...
I’ve just posted a draft PyCon proposal to the PEAK Wiki; I’d be interested in feedback from anyone interested in the subject. Are there any topics missing from the outline that you’d like to see? Conversely, am I belaboring the obvious in it? The...
After thinking through the fact base design a bit more, I think I have a clearer picture: a fact base is a mapping from fact types to fact sets, that supports rules that are invoked in response to change events. I’m here using “fact type” as...
My idea of how the fact-base thing will work keeps evolving in interesting ways. For example, it seems clearer to me now that it’s not necessary to restrict facts to tuples, or to require their state to be externalized. Facts can be arbitrary...
I think I’ve figured out how to solve a slightly different constraint satisfaction problem from the one I was working on Friday. I was thinking about GUI constraints, of the sort used in the Laszlo rich client platform. Laszlo uses constraints to...
Even if one is not religious, ritual and tradition can be life-enhancing. Both of my parents are dead now, but they live on in my Christmas traditions. My mother had made a practice of a special dinner on Christmas Eve, for example. Definitely not a...
