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Blog Retrospective #2

In the first blog retrospective, written in November, I organized blog posts into five themes:

Project Updates Shell Trivia / WTFs Oil Language Design Static Parsing of Bash Parsing Algorithms and Techniques

Here are the entries I've written since, also organized by theme:

1. Oil Language

I validated the Oil language design by Translating Shell to Oil. Part Two goes into more detail.

The requirement to automatically translate shell to Oil will have a large effect on the language design. I've come to view that as a good thing.

2. Shell: The Good Parts

I plan at least two more posts in this series, but they'll have to wait until after the initial OSH release.

3. Language Implementation Techniques

(a) Zephyr ASDL. It took me about two months to replace the core of the interpreter with ASDL, so it was one of the biggest topics.

(b) Other Implementation Techniques

4. Programming Language Design

Implementing Oil has shed light on a few language design issues. Though I only wrote about one tradeoff, I have many more notes.

5. Project Status Updates

Writing these status updates helps me organize the project. In chronological order:

6. Blog Meta

Using Reddit for Blog Comments. I'm happy with how this turned out. I'm not the only one to have problems with popular comment services.

These entries enumerate topics I wanted to address, but didn't have the time to. If you're interested in a particular topic, feel free to leave a comment.

January: Blog TODO Stack

February: Status Update and Blog Backlog Notably, Shell: The Bad Parts got dropped. I will return to this topic when I've made more progress on the Oil language, because it's designed to address them.

April: Switching to "Twitter Mode"

Reminder

I put the blog into Twitter mode in order to concentrate on coding. After the OSH 0.1 release, I should have time to write more substantive posts.