As soon as I started learning Ruby, a few years ago, I got immediately hooked on its Range class. I could not believe I had been programming in .NET without them for so long. I like to think of range objects as the specification for a for loop, packaged in an object that can be passed around. That's...
Many times when I'm writing JavaScript code with Ajax calls I don't have an URL to call and get the data yet. Or sometimes I have an URL that gives me valid data and I need to test the code against invalid data or some other variation that I don't have handy. WEBrick In these situations,...
Language Envy: This post is part of a series where I wish C# had a particular feature I came to like when working with other programming languages. Every time I have to produce a string in C# the little groaning chimp that lives inside my head pulls his hair out. It's about time we had a better way...
Language Envy: This post is part of a series where I wish C# had a particular feature I came to like when working with other programming languages. It's easy to let a small language feature go unnoticed. The more I spend time writing JavaScript and Ruby, the more one little detail shows itself loud...
Although C# is the language that I can call myself proficient enough to make a living these days, there are other languages that I have to use for specific tasks (like JavaScript, SQL, XSLT.) I also like using other general purpose languages for pure exploration or pet projects. I'd include Ruby...