So it has been a busy last few weeks. Well, not busy with work as such but a semblance of work. Just one of those periods where the time passes and one feels stressed out but in the final reckoning, nothing of substantial productivity stands forth. It has been a rather boring last few weeks and I am itching for some real action!
I got my copy of Allen Holub’s ‘Compiler Design in C’ the other day and I could not be more thrilled! It was just the book that I needed for a long pending pet project of mine. Though what shape this specific project will take over the course of the next few months remains to be seen. I am thinking it is going to be a rather interesting experience all the same. The first project that I am undertaking is a Compiler Design and Implementation one – I had originally planned for the Arduino platform for two reasons – 1. There seems to be a severe paucity of mid-level languages to program in on the Arduino family of platforms, and 2. It would be a much simpler exercise in some ways (minimal functionality set, procedural language) and greatly complex in others (strict memory management, high-level syntax and low-level functionality). I feel it would be really useful and educational at the same time – a perfectly sound use of my precious time! However until I get down to the actual design phase, it remains open to new thoughts. First, I have to plow through the hundreds of man-hours of theory and hands-on. I simply relish merely the thought of it. I also plan to keep my progress updated through this blog as I progress through this project. I would give the theory around a month of effort and the actual project perhaps around three months, tentatively. After all, I am not simply planning to create a crude and low-performant C compiler for whichever platform be, but a full-fledged programming language.
The second project is on a much higher level. I had purchased a couple of domain names a couple of months back and I have been planning for some free time to finally get down to this project! I want to create my own website for my URL – http://www.timmyjose.com using Python, Django, JavaScript and CSS. The backend, templating engine and other details have to be decided still. This should serve me well on two fronts – refresh my knowledge of Python and Django and give me a chance to implement these technologies in a real world project. And get me to sit down my behind down at last and actually learn JavaScript and CSS for good! Plus what better way to showcase your own talents than on your own website, right? I would give this project anywhere between three to six months since it would be in parallel with the other project. I will keep this blog updated with my progress on this one as well – my learnings, my failures and my successes as well!
And of course, there are tons of stuff that I have blog about other than these two projects including, but not restricted to, the topics that I had promised in my earlier blogs to tackle. I should be able to maintain a more or less consistent tempo with my blog posts from now on. Fingers crossed!
Talking with a Lisp 