[Purdue-pm] (no subject)

[Mark Senn]

Purdue Perl Mongers,


I volunteer to give an hour long pro file processor talk based on Perl 5
on January 13, 2021.  See below for more information on pro.


TYPESCRIPT

According to [1] the TypeScript language is more popular than
JavaScript.  TypeScript is a strongly typed superset of JavaScript but
not a whole lot more than JavaScript [2].

[1]  https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/06/15/talking-typescript-with-ryan-cavanaugh/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_overflow_newsletter
[2]  https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-typescript-and-javascript/


DATES

Hat tip to Stan Harlow who said something about how important it was
to have dates on everything in a meeting years ago.  I agree.  I think
it may have been Buter Dunsmore who suggested putting dates in title
lines of HTML pages.
Note that there is no date or author listed for [1] or [2].  In HTML I
do, for example,
    <title>Mark Senn (Mar 3, 2019)</title>
    ...
    <center>
    <font size=+3><b>Mark Senn</b></font><br>
    <font size=+2>March 3, 2019</font><br>
    </center>
    ...
    <h4>
    Revised: March 3, 2019<br>
    Created: December 15, 1994
    </h4>
so the
    o  three letter month date last revised date occurs
       in the Firefox title bar---just use three letters
       for date to leave room for long titles
    o  my Name and date occur at the top of the document
    o  and last revised and created date are at bottom of
       document
Don't use 1/2 style dates.  In the U.S. that's January
second.  In Europe, February 1.  There is an ISO standard
for dates, for example 2020-06-26.  I've started using,
for example, 2020-06-26 12:56+00 style dates for everthing.
That follows the ISO standard.  Time increases monitonically
(spring forward, fall back---hmmm...can have two times
that happened 60 minutes apart have the same time).


PRO

I often use the "pro file processor" I wrote to (using
TypeScript buzz words) transpile a high level description
of content into a lower level descriptions (HTML or LaTeX).
Let me know if you're interested in getting a complete
descrption of pro at a virtual meeting.  It has
stuff for
    .conditionals  (.if, .else, .endif, etc.)
    .include       (read source code from other file)
    .divert        (divert output to one or more files)
    .revert        (undo a .divert)
    list           (source can be run over every record
                   in a data file)
    extensibility  (any Perl 5 code can be put anywhere
                   and is eval'ed)
    etc., etc., etc.

This is in Perl 5.  I've been using it since 1993
and it has saved me tons of time, and more important
than that made it easier to express what I mean.


PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

JavaScript or TypeScript.  Yes, it is better but to
make a big difference take more of a risk and
go from, for example,

    MATLAB to Mathematica
    (I hate Mathematica notebook mathematical typesetting quality though
    and suggest you use a Jupyter interface if that is important.)

    Perl 5 to Raku (formerly known as Perl 6)

    vi to Emacs
    I learned vi for CS or Engineering classes around 1980.
    Learned Emacs and moved to it and never looked back.
    For people who do computer stuff everyday I suggest
    using the best tool that works for you instead of
    staying with the status quo forever.  It can save
    a ton of time over the rest of your career.

I've recommended that only Mathematica and Raku
be taught to Purdue Honors students.  Most everything
else they'll see are subsets of that.  Plus,
Mathematica and Raku are the most powerful
general purpose programming languages I know of.


-mark