Exceptions
It seems that these days whenever anyone describes some language feature, I’m compelled to compare/contrast that with how we’ve done things in the new neptune language. Most recently James Robertson...
View ArticleTraits
One of the changes we’ve made in going from smalltalk to neptune, beyond pure syntax, is in the object model. We’ve added an optional type system and introduced two new concepts: traits and protocols....
View ArticleWhy Neptune?
Lately I’ve been writing a lot about the neptune language, the replacement for smalltalk on the OSVM platform. I’ve tried to focus on the technical aspects both because there’s lots to write about but...
View ArticleCharacters
Quick: which character is '\u03b5'? Let’s see, well, since it’s between 0370 and 03ff it’s clearly Coptic or Greek. The Greek lower-case characters start at 03b1 so it would be the lower case form of...
View ArticleSelectors
One of the most important rules in software engineering is don’t repeat yourself. If you find yourself writing the same code, or almost the same code, in more than one place then that is a sign that...
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Neptune
Neptune is a new programming language inspired mainly by smalltalk and C/C++ but also taking ideas from many other places. It is, in short, a dynamically typed object-oriented language with an optional...
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Types
The last big thing in neptune that I haven’t written about is the static type system. We’re not actually 100% done with it yet — the design is mostly done but there is still a few late additions that...
View ArticleTypes #2
When I wrote the first post about types in neptune I ran out of steam before I was completely finished. In this post I’ll finish by describing two features I only mentioned briefly in the first post,...
View ArticleRIP
Esmertec sent out an innocent-looking press release today: Jean-Claude Martinez Confirmed as CEO of Esmertec. But there’s a bit more to it than the title suggests: Cost reductions: Management has...
View ArticleSaturn?
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve started work on a new implementation of neptune. Even though Esmertec Denmark has been closed down it didn’t mean that the language died, not as such. What it meant...
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