So, in short, you don’t have to muck about with the classpath in Ashlar: we resolve that automatically. If you need to do fancy Ivy stunts, you can muck about with ~/.ashlar/ivy.settings. If you don’t want to think about Ivy or if you mess up your ivy.settings, Ashlar will automatically generate an appropriate one.

We’ve got ashlar and ashlarc. I’d like two other programs eventually: ashlard to deploy components to a local Ivy repository that Ashlar uses, and ashlarx to be a REPL and execute scripts.

For testing, I’m using Cuke4Duke by way of my gradle-plugins. The functional tests act on the actual distribution: the very same code that will be zipped up to make a release. So I can’t get into a situation where the tests pass as long as I’m in the context of a unit test case, but compiled code bombed out on us.

As for the language itself: at this point, all the language can do is print out integers and rational numbers. Not terribly exciting. But the language itself is where the attention is going next: first, some rudimentary type-checking; then, mathematical operations.

Things are about to get a bit slower, because now that I’ve got to this point, I’m shifting some of my free-time focus back to other pending projects. But it’s a pretty exciting place to be.

Comments

• August 24, 2010, Hamlet D'Arcy wrote: The OSGi stuff built into the language is a really good idea. Kudos for actually implementing it as well!

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After a while, I discovered that there are good reasons why Scala does things the way it does. In those “fixes”, what I was asking for was basically having my cake and eating it, too. Cornerstone was born of naiveté, and so while it was a wonderful educational opportunity, it was a stillborn language.

With lessons learned, I reconsidered my approach and started in on a new language, Ashlar. In my free time this summer, as a counter-balance to the pastoral/ministerial work I was doing, I cranked on Ashlar. It’s still just getting started, but a big hurdle has been crossed: the runtime is up and running, and the compiler infrastructure is in place. The functional test of printing “Hello, World” has gone from red to green. By request, I’ve added a bit of a description up on the Ashlar wiki, so go check it out.

In particular, there is an extensive conversation about the assumptions of Ashlar. Let me know what you think about that: I’m very curious.

Comments

• August 17, 2010, Michael Ekstrand wrote: Thank you for documenting the assumptions and explicitly positioning Ashlar in that way - it makes a lot of sense, and is refreshingly honest that Ashlar isn't intended to be the final programming language for everything. In general, I think the assumptions are pretty reasonable. About the only one that I have difficulty with with is the memory usage one. While memory is (generally) cheap, exorbitant memory usage does become a problem for cloud deployment where your rented VM may well have 256, 512, or 1024 MB of RAM rather than a few gigs to keep the web app server happy.
• August 17, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: Yeah, we'll see how the memory stuff works out. I'd like the language to be reasonably sized even for virtual machines (distributed processing is one of they targets for Ashlar), but there's a fair bit of infrastructure that's coming with the language and I'm not willing to sacrifice it. We'll see how this works out.
• August 17, 2010, Marc wrote: Why not use JavaCC and JJTree?
• August 17, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: I am using JavaCC and JJTree. See the currently-gutted *.jjt here and a previous take on a JJTree implementation here. (Dear Future: If those links are failing, it's because I moved the compiler to its own subproject.)

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In and of itself, that’s just bad coding. I can deal with that: no big deal. The *headdesk* is because this is for a database library vendor.

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In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court has ruled that is it illegal to do peace-building efforts with terrorist groups—y’know, nasty things like “training PKK members to use international law to resolve disputes peacefully; teaching PKK members to petition the United Nations and other representative bodies for relief; and engaging in political advocacy on behalf of Kurds living in Turkey and Tamils living in Sri Lanka”. Y’know, stuff that actually undercuts the divide which leads to desperate people feeling like they have no choice but violence.

Comments

• July 10, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: Probably the most depressing line is this one: "Providing material support in any form would also undermine cooperative international efforts to prevent terrorism and strain the United States’ relationships with its allies" In and of itself, that's not so bad—but the implied argument is that the Supreme Court should be ruling not on what is right or wrong, or even on what is legal and illegal, but on what might "strain the United States' relationships with its allies". Apparently the Supreme Court is a part of the diplomatic wing of the United States.
• July 11, 2010, Leaflord wrote: What the hell? Branding every insurgent as terrorist was bad enough, this is worse

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Review

A fun and very informative documentary movie on the beer business in all its various facets. It channels a bit of Michael Moore at times when particular absurdities surface (like the beer lobbyist talking about “neo-prohibitionists”), but mostly it’s a very direct yet entertaining revelation of the beer industry from an insider. It’s particularly interesting to hear from the owners of Moonshot Beer and Dogfish Head Brewing, who are prominently featured throughout the documentary.

Commentary

Every day is election day in America, and you vote with your wallet. Every dollar you spend is a vote in favor of doing business one way versus another: when you spend your money, companies take that and they use it to advance their own interests. So when you spend money, you’re basically advocating for more of that kind of business. Buy at McDonald’s instead of a local fast food place (like a taqueria)? Then you’re advocating for more McDonald’s in the world fewer independent fast food places. Do you buy at Walmart instead of a locally-owned independent business? Do you buy RIAA music instead of independent musicians? You get the picture. Every day and every dollar is advocating for a way of life. And that’s just the reality of living in the market economy.

Although I have thought of this in terms of music (hence, The Indie3 Project), restaurants, groceries, and shopping, I never really thought about it in terms of beer. I’m not entirely sure why. This documentary really woke me up.

Like many other industries, the big players have invested in the status quo heavily, and shaped it to be what they want it to be. Like in other industries, they’ve done this through both market means (using their economic weight to shoulder out competition) and political means (shoring up federal legislation from the end of prohibition that excludes small brewers). Of course, when money can be used to buy politicians, then the difference between the commercial market and politics is just one of labels.

“Armchair activists” are probably saying that we can solve the problem by electing new politicians to change these laws—as soon as you can get politicians in office who are willing to take on non-popular and esoteric regulations in the face of powerful and well-funded lobbyists, let me know. Until then, we have to solve this problem through consumers changing the market. And that means spending money in counter-dominant ways: spending money locally, and spending it on underdogs.

Part of the shock from this movie was realizing how many brands and styles of beer that I thought were small labels really aren’t. In particular, I was deeply saddened to find out that Leinenkugel is Miller and Rolling Rock is Anheuser-Busch. You Pabst drinkers? That’s Miller-Coors. Which of the “big three” you buy is really moot these days, because Miller, Coors, and Anheuser-Busch are all owned by a single Belgian company. So much for any of those brands being patriotic: these “American beers” aren’t.

I’m going back to Big Boss Brewing’s Angry Angel.

Comments

• June 28, 2010, Marc Stock wrote: The voting with your dollars thing is a bit of a red herring. In truth, your choices are limited to what you have access to, not what exists. So, if my grocery store or liquor store only caries big three brands, then that's what you can "vote" on. The big sellers know this and they do everything in their power to dominate the shelves and they are very effective at it. Visibility is everything. There are over 1500 breweries in the US but locally I'd estimate I have access to maybe a dozen brands outside of the big three.
• June 28, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: By spending your money in the face of limited choices, you are voting in favor of more limited choices. The very fact you spend money that way is what enables such situations to continue. If the only beer you can buy at your grocery store or liquor store are big three brands, then buy your beer somewhere else. That's simple enough. The bigger issue is limited choice at concessions stands at ballparks and the like. There your option is playing into the economics of limited choice and feeding into the dominant swill, or not having anything at all. That's a moral choice I'll leave up to you.
• June 28, 2010, Marc Stock wrote: No, you're not getting it. I'm saying there are only a limited number of choices throughout my area -- not just grocery stores. Almost nobody is going to go on a road trip for beer especially with the price of gas what it is these days, and certainly not enough to change the market. At the end of the day, every brewery is fighting for shelf space and that space is extremely limited. This is like arguing that if you don't like what China's doing domestically by oppressing their population or bullying Tibet then just stop buying products made there...good luck with that. It's too late, the damage has already been done. You become the victim of the masses because whatever they decide is what choice(s) you get.
• June 28, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: IF you are in a situation where you really have no other option, then be my guest. But for most people (including all people who can buy beer at their local megamart), buying alternative beers consists of just opening your eyes and looking around a bit more. Your general posture of reluctant resignation is simply false to fact. One of the hopeful notes within "Beer Wars" is that craft beer purchases already are making a dent in the market, which is why you've seen more pseudo-craft beers, pseudo-imports, and craft beer overtakes recently. So there's already been demonstrable impact in the market from consumers changing their buying habits. Now it's just time to be aware of the new way in which they're trying to get at you.
• June 28, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: Oh, and if you go to a non-ABC liquor store and they only stock pseudo-American InBev-Anheuser-Busch products, you need to go to a different liquor store: they're probably selling you just the crappiest stuff across the board.
• June 29, 2010, dave wrote: It's not just about "voting with dollars"... it's about making a damned effort to be an educated and active consumer. Can't find good beer at your local supermarket? Find another store! Find a dedicated liquor store, or two or three. When you find one with a good selection, vote with your dollars and give them your business. Can't find a selection anywhere? Find a store that's willing to take requests and ask them to carry what you want. If/when they do, be sure to tell your friends and encourage more business for them. If you sit around and passively wait for a choice, you won't get one. You'll get whatever is easiest and cheapest for them to give you. Give your money to vendors who do something to deserve it - but be sure you deserve the choices you get. Find out who your local brewers are. I'm pretty sure every state in the Union has local beer at this point. BUY THEM. If you don't like their beer, get in touch and tell them why! Honestly, anyone starting a small brewery is more a fanatic than a businessman, and will probably be thrilled at any customer bothering to talk to them at all. You can have a real influence in the goods you consume - something you won't get from Annheiser-Busch. And if all else fails, buy the gear and learn to brew your own. Maybe you can even sell some...
• June 30, 2010, Marc Stock wrote: "Can’t find good beer at your local supermarket? Find another store! Find a dedicated liquor store, or two or three. When you find one with a good selection, vote with your dollars and give them your business. Can’t find a selection anywhere? Find a store that’s willing to take requests and ask them to carry what you want. " Apparently some folks have a lot more free time on their hands that they can crusade for such things.
• July 2, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: In general, I'm all +1 for Dave's comment above, but I do have to make one correction: I'm pretty sure Utah doesn't have a local brewery.
• July 2, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: Apparently some folks have a lot more free time on their hands that they can crusade for such things. ...or Google. If you don't care, Marc, then you don't care. It's okay. Really. It's fine, just as long as I don't hear you complaining about not having any good choices or how gigantic companies are slowly eating away at both your civil rights and American culture. As long as you're cool with that, then you can be cool being lazy.
• July 2, 2010, Robert Fischer wrote: Marc, judging from your IP, you're in Savage, MN. I happen to know a thing or two about that area—check out Dan Patch/Marketplace Liquor (they're the same owner-operator). Tell them what beers you like, and that you'd like a local brewery that isn't owned by InBev (InBev=Miller-Coors/Anheuser-Bush). They'll take care of you and find something you'll like. Now you don't have to spend a lot of time "crusading".
• July 9, 2010, Alicia wrote: Actually: http://www.united-nations-of-beer.com/guide-to-utah-breweries.html
• July 27, 2010, Michael Chermside wrote: "The voting with your dollars thing is a bit of a red herring. In truth, your choices are limited to what you have access to, not what exists." That's funny... I have the same problem with my voting.

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