zia

In a comment on my previous entry (a few weeks ago, sorry!), Dean asked:
Are you participating in the Pragmatic Programming Language development? I was surprised to see that neither Thomas or Hunt's weblog contained a note of it.
Looking forward to your perspective in this endeavor!
A couple of URL references:
The Pragmatic Programmers email list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragprog/
The Pragmatic language email list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragmatic_lang/
(I still think "LotY" would have been a better name for the language.)
I started out interested in it (and I was the one who had their mailing list added to gmane.org), but I became much less so once it changed from a language design effort into an effort to implement a new low-level VM. Speaking of which, I suppose I ought to point out LLVM (at http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/) to them. The language itself is starting to sound too much like a vague be-everything-to-everyone multi-paradigm thing — trying to please everyone rarely works.
The abrasive personalities and the gratuitous anti-Python bigotry didn't help any, and I haven't really been paying attention for the last couple of weeks.
Also, hope you caught all the OS X references in the Python 2.3 press release.
Yep, it's pretty cool that Apple finally listened to me. When I was working there, I was suggesting that they should include Python in Mac OS X since (literally) the previous millenium.

But back to pragmatic:
On Lambda the Ultimate, Isaac Guoy asked

Looking at The Pragmatic Programmer / Resources gives me the idea that making the best use of existing languages could be "harnessing the power of basic tools". How does designing a new language (as opposed to a DSL) creep under the banner "Pragmatic Programming"?

One of their stated reasons for developing "a new language" was as a learning experience. E.g., Eric M.'s message here.