Paolo Amoroso's Journal

Planet Python carried out my request to remove my blog from the aggregator. Now their feed no longer syndicates my posts about Python, which I'll no longer write much about.

Planet Python is an aggregator of blogs, podcasts, and other resources of interest to the Python community. In late 2019 I submitted the feed of Python posts of my old blog, later updating it to point to my new blog.

I was learning the language and sharing on the blog my experience with coding projects and other experiences. But although I had great fun with Python and accomplished a lot I'm proud of, my interest waned as I rediscovered my old love Lisp.

I encountered Scheme in the early 1990s at an introductory computer science class based on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, fell in love with the Lisp family of languages, and learned Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp. Lisp became my only language until the early 2010s when real life claimed my time and attention. Near the end of the decade, intrigued by Python and its massive ecosystem, I decided to learn it.

At the beginning of 2023 I discovered Medley Interlisp and got hooked.

Using Interlisp and its environment made me realize Lisp is the language that comes most natural to me, I'm most productive with, and gives me joy and not just fun. I never mastered and enjoyed other languages to the level of Lisp. And my projects turned out not to need Python's batteries.

I'll still maintain a reading knowledge of Python and keep up with its ecosystem. But this journey made me readjust my focus on Lisp, now my only language.

It's good to be back home.

#Interlisp #Python #Lisp #blogging

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I integrated Femtounit with the File Manager by defining the new type TESTS for Femtounit tests and redefining DEFTEST in terms of it.

It turns out it's not a good idea as the tests get duplicated. The DEFTEST macro expands into a DEFINEQ function definition and the File Manager notices both, the DEFTEST form of type TESTS and the function of type FNS.

The fix seemed simple, assigning tests to an existing type such as FNS. First I removed TESTS with (DELDEF 'TESTS 'DEFINE-TYPES), then replaced the type argument TESTS with FNS in the XCL:DEFDEFINER form. But when I tried to edit a sample test TEST.PLUS for the PLUS function with (ED 'TEST.PLUS :DONTWAIT), SEdit quit with the error:

Warning: Couldn't find a hash-table for FNS definitions.
One will be created.
Could not find fns definition for TEST.PLUS.
Could not find fns definition for
TEST.PLUS

Back to the drawing board.

#femtounit #Interlisp #Lisp

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My old blog post Why your blog still needs RSS was shared on Hacker News, made it to the home page with about 250 upvotes, and so far generated almost 9K views. I'm pleased as it hints there's still a lot of interest in RSS.

#blogging

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I integrated Femtounit, my Interlisp unit test framework, with the File Manager and the SEdit structure editor.

To achieve this I defined the new File Manager type TESTS for Femtounit tests and redefined DEFTEST in terms of it, then tweaked the code formatting of tests in SEdit. Now the system notices and keeps track of new and modified tests.

Here's the File Manager type menu, which SEdit pops up when opening a test, with the DEFTEST option highlighted under TESTS:

Also, now SEdit handles and properly formats test definitions like this of a function SQUARE to compute the square of its argument:

Implementing the new features was much easier than expected.

The traditional way of adding types to the File Manager, described in the Interlisp Reference Manual, involves writing a dozen functions for most of which it's not clear how they're supposed to work. Medley 1.0 added support for two easy to use File Manager type defining forms that replace all that, XCL:DEF-DEFINE-TYPE and XCL:DEFDEFINER. This code is all it took for Femtounit's new TESTS type:

(XCL:DEF-DEFINE-TYPE TESTS "Femtounit unit tests")

(XCL:DEFDEFINER (DEFTEST (:PROTOTYPE
                            (LAMBDA (NAME)
                              (AND (LITATOM NAME)
                                   `(DEFTEST ,NAME ("Arg List")
                                      "Body")))))
                TESTS
                (NAME PARAMETERS &BODY BODY)
   `(DEFINEQ (,NAME ,PARAMETERS
      (LET ((FTU.TEST.NAME (APPEND FTU.TEST.NAME (LIST ',NAME]
        ,@BODY))))

This additional tweak makes SEdit format and indent DEFTEST unit test definitions the same way as DEFUN function definitions in Common Lisp:

(SEDIT:DEF-LIST-FORMAT DEFTEST CL:DEFUN)

The simplified process is not discussed in the Interlisp Reference Manual, where I'd have expected, but in a more obscure source, the Medley 1.0 release notes from page 52 of the PDF document. My proactive reading of all the documentation paid off as it let me spot such crucial information and save a lot of work.

#femtounit #Interlisp #Lisp

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Today I attended the funeral service of my beloved mother who passed away peacefully two days ago.

I'm signing off a nearly continuous shift as a full time caregiver started almost 13 years ago. Over this long time I took care first of my father, then a sister of my mother, and finally my mother. The years of the pandemic were the most demanding and exhausting, constantly pushing me to the edge of burnout and forcing me to take some time off.

I assisted my dear family members until their very end to the best of my capabilities. Now I'm ready and eager to start a new life.

#personal

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Write.as, the blogging platform I use, lets me embed a YouTube video in a post by just inserting the URL in a blank line of the Makrdown source.

It's a valuable feature with a major drawback: YouTube embeds contain user tracking code by Google. I don't mind such trackers but my many privacy minded readers do.

As a workaround I could insert the trackerless code YouTube provides, but the design of the video player is not responsive and gets cropped on mobile screens. Write.as relies on Embed.ly for YouTube and other embeds and Embed.ly doesn't support trackerless embeds. I and others tried to bring the issue to the attention of the Write.as developer but not much happened.

Managing tracking and cookie consent is a hassle, so what to do? I just went ahead and replaced the half a dozen embeds of my blog with links to the corresponding videos on YouTube.

A nice side effect is the Blacklight privacy inspector now reports 0 trackers and cookies on my blog.

#blogging #Google

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I left Reddit and Twitter in early 2022 when I joined Mastodon.

It was a few months prior to the rumors Elon Musk might acquire Twitter and my decision had different motivations: I was invisible on the platform. As an average user, the algorithms made it impossible for me to be seen or have interactions.

As for Reddit I left for a combination of these reasons:

• algorithmic feeds designed to arise strong, often negative emotions
• snark and noise in the comments
• ads
• impenetrable moderation rules that make it difficult to figure why posts are rejected, even after reading the guidelines and FAQs cover to cover and reviewing past threads

The Reddit API restrictions of June of 2023, and the migration of many to the Fediverse, made me curious about federated and independent Reddit alternatives, particularly Lemmy. I joined the Lemmy.ml instance because it focuses on topics I'm interested in and values I share, plus it has a critical mass.

I've been on Lemmy for the past couple of weeks. In the first days my instance was slow and broken, then performance and stability improved substantially.

Although not polished as corporate platforms, which is a feature, Lemmy's design is functional and intuitive. Some features make Lemmy better than Reddit, such as the ability to expand and collapse posts in the feed to quickly browse them.

While there's a lot of activity around mainstream or popular topics, some Lemmy communities are pretty quiet.

I don't mind new or lesser known platforms as content quality and valuable interactions are what I'm after, which doesn't necessarily correlate with size. I'm making it a point to seed with content and discussions the communities I subscribe to, as well as comment on and interact with posts by others.

All I need now is to stick around and keep contributing.

#fediverse

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I'm writing another Interlisp program, Sysrama, an Interlisp documentation tool for presenting information on the Lisp objects of a program. It produces reports that list the types and signatures of functions, the fields of records, global variables, property lists, Executive commands, and more.

The way I reference the details of Lisp objects when coding gave me the idea for Sysrama.

I often forget the names and signatures of the functions or the names of the record fields I need. Browsing or looking up the code for referencing them is a source of friction.

Interlisp comes with the powerful program analysys tool Masterscope that gives its best with answering specific questions on the internals of programs. But it has a steep learning curve and it doesn't provide the kind of big picture view I seek. Instead, I wanted a simple tool for producing an overview of the main Lisp objects in a program.

This is a sample report Sysrama prints on another of my Interlisp programs, Stringscope:

The main sections group objects under the same File Manager types, such as FNS or RECORDS. This is because Sysrama can extract information only from programs under File Manager control.

Suppose you want to analyze the Lisp program MYPROG. Once Sysrama is in memory, load MYPROG:

(LOAD 'MYPROG)

To have Sysrama print a report with information on MYPROG evaluate:

(SUMMARIZE 'MYPROG)

You can narrow down the information to specific File Manager types such as FNS and RECORDS:

(SUMMARIZE 'MYPROG '(FNS RECORDS))

or to specific objects like the function MYFUN:

(SUMMARIZE 'MYPROG 'FNS 'MYFUN)

More documentation is available at the project repo.

Sysrama already does most of what I had in mind but I'll implement a few more features.

I'll tweak the reports to show more information on some Lisp objects. And I'll add the ability to redirect the output to a scrollable window rather than to the primary output stream. By default Interlisp windows don't save the output history and can't be scrolled back, so such a feature will help review reports that don't fit in a window.

#sysrama #Interlisp #Lisp

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Medley is a rich development environment but it's missing a test framework. Or so I thought. To fill the supposed gap I wrote Femtounit, a tiny — hence femto — unit test framework for Interlisp.

I wanted a small framework simple to port to or write for Interlisp, yet useful in practice. At less than a couple dozen lines of code, Femtounit took very little effort to design and write as it's based on the PCL test framework Peter Seibel described in Chapter 9 of his book Practical Common Lisp.

I reused much of Peter's design and code, adapting it to Interlisp and tweaking the reporting of tests. Femtounit outputs a single period character for every passed test, unlike the full report his framework prints.

Using Femtounit looks like this:

Suppose you want to test this function that returns the square of its argument:

(DEFINEQ (SQUARE (X) (TIMES X X)))

You may define a TEST.SQUARE test function like this:

(DEFTEST TEST.SQUARE ()
  (CHECK.EXPECT (EQP (SQUARE 1) 1)
                (EQP (SQUARE 2) 4)
                (EQP (SQUARE 3) 9)
                (EQP (SQUARE 4) 16)))

To run the tests, just call the function:

(TEST.SQUARE)

which will print a period character for every passed test:

....

Some documentation is at the project repo.

After I finished the initial code of Femtounit, Larry Masinter pointed out Medley does have a test framework, and quite an advanced one. This system, which the Medley documentation simply calls test system and is much more than a framework, was originally designed to test Interlisp and its environment. The code is now in one of the Medley repos.

I thought I explored every nook and cranny of Medley and its documentation, yet I missed the test system. The system is interesting in itself and I'll use it for most of my code.

But Femtounit is a fun little learning project I still want to proceed with. It'll teach me how to integrate the framework with Interlisp for editing unit test definitions with the SEdit structure editor, as well as saving the definitions to files and managing them with the make-like File Manager tool.

#femtounit #Interlisp #Lisp

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Reading is the main use of my new Lenovo Tab M10 Plus 3rd Gen tablet, yet I hadn't checked out its reading mode. Now I did. Reading mode sets a color palette that's easy to the eyes such as black and white, systemwide or per app. Nice, but I can get a similar effect by changing the page color to sepia in Google Play Books and other reading apps.

#Android

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