drnewman
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Thursday May 22, 2025 @09:26PM (#44068936)
Nice explanation
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Thursday May 22, 2025 @01:54PM (#44064715)
I’ll check it out. Thank you.
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Thursday May 22, 2025 @01:52PM (#44064688)
I would say more broadly the innovation was two fold: 1) to make these features available in a syntactic form that would seem more familiar to programmers and 2) the powerful insight that when combined with Smalltalk style meta programming you can have a language that on the surface seems very conventional but underneath is just as powerful as Smalltalk or Lisp.
Although I would say he didn’t get 100% there although that this point Ruby isn’t too far from that.
These are ideas that I think are worth trying to take even further. In fact, I’ve been experimenting with that.
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Thursday May 22, 2025 @01:28PM (#44064369)
I agree blocks are closures. But they’re call stack aware closures. Which gives them _some_ of the power of continuations.
I’m also sure you’re right that they’re not implemented using continuations. However, my understanding is that Ruby was originally conceived as a language with continuations. I’ll see if I can find a reference for that. But from what I recall reading in a blog post from someone who was at a programming language conference in 1997 when Matz introduced the language that’s how he described it.
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @10:05PM (#44058083)
Yes Smalltalk has continuations. So it can do all of those things as well. But I don't think they're explicitly tied to blocks like they are in Ruby. This really isn't a problem for Smalltalk since it's not as syntax oriented as Ruby.
The invovation is to have those features tied to convenient syntax.
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @09:44PM (#44057968)
I'd think the preferred way would be to implement them as a separate class. That'd be more in line with the design of other core classes (like TrueClass & FalseClass). It'd also have created the opportunity to create a "Callable" protocol early in the design which would have been great, and would harmonize with the design of Ruby's many other protocols Enumerable, Comparable, Range-compatible values, etc.
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @09:40PM (#44057948)
Yeah, I think I've heard that too.
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @09:39PM (#44057945)
That's insightful
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @09:28PM (#44057889)
Blocks in Smalltalk (to my understanding) are closures. Blocks in Ruby are closures that also bring the call stack they were created in with them.
One way to think of about it is this: anonymous functions as originally implemented in early Lisps are code as an object, closures are code with its lexical environment as an object. You can think of a Ruby block as code with its lexical environment and its call stack as an object.
So they don't just handle return differently than closures, they have access to the call stack of the site where they're created like a continuation. This is why they handle return differently, but this is just one of the things that falls out from that. It also comes with other control flow features like "redo", "retry", "next", "rescue", "finally", and others. These are all call stack control (control flow) conveniences, just like return is. All of them can be thought of as being abstractions built on top of continuations (just ask a Scheme hacker).
Originally Ruby was basically a Lisp without macros, but with continuations, a Smalltalk like object system and a lot of syntactic affordances inspired by Perl, and other languages. Blocks are one of the conveniences built on top of the Lispy semantics.
Note that I'm explaining how blocks work as an abstraction (vidarh below explains how they work as a concretion, as implemented in MRI).
Re:What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Rub...
on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @06:57PM (#44057101)
It seems you're pretty upset about your experience with Ruby. I'm sorry that's been the case for you.
However, in Ruby blocks aren't just about flexibility, more importantly they're about generality. They're not there to resolve an edge case at all (Ruby also has keywords for loops). They're a generalization of control flow that is just slightly less general than continuations. In practical use they provide an alterative to Lisp macros for many use cases.
These were some of the problems Matz was trying to sort out with his design of Ruby--creating a language that was fun and easy to use for day-to-day programming, with as much of the meta-programming power of Lisp and Smalltalk as possible. Blocks are one of his true innovatations that came from trying to balance that tension.
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Re:A visual demo of Ruby's lazy enumerator
on Saturday January 11, 2025 @06:12PM (#42669723)
Laziness is great for collections, and modeling the infinite but as a general model for programming it's a little loopy for my taste too ;-)
Re:Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2025)
on Saturday January 04, 2025 @07:25AM (#42594308)
SEEKING WORK | Maine | Remote
Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.
Looking for short term engagements
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
Highlights:
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript
- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System integration & automation
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2025)
on Saturday January 04, 2025 @07:18AM (#42594290)
Location: Maine
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies:
Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript (TypeScript)
Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Express
Front-end: Vanilla, HTMX, React, Svelte, ClojureScript
Other Languages: Clojure, Java, C, PHP, Perl, Bash, C#, Python, Swift, VBA
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman
Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects,
design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer
- Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System architecture & design
- Looking for part-time or short term engagements
Re:Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2024)
on Tuesday December 03, 2024 @10:13AM (#42306959)
SEEKING WORK | Maine | Remote
Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.
Looking for part-time & short term engagements
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
Highlights:
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript
- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System integration & automation
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2024)
on Tuesday December 03, 2024 @10:10AM (#42306905)
Location: Maine
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies:
Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript (TypeScript)
Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Express
Front-end: Vanilla, HTMX, React, Svelte, ClojureScript
Other Languages: Clojure, Java, C, PHP, Perl, Bash, C#, Python, Swift, VBA
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman
Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects,
design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer
- Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System architecture & design
- Looking for part-time or short term engagements
Re:Repair and Remain: How to do the slow, hard, good work of staying put
on Monday August 12, 2024 @07:03PM (#41230365)
Thank you for clarifying that.
Re:Repair and Remain: How to do the slow, hard, good work of staying put
on Monday August 12, 2024 @07:02PM (#41230354)
Thanks so much for sharing that. I'm so glad that you and your dear one have gotten to such a beautiful place! I had to learn a similar lesson with regard to self-love and care from dealing with type-1 diabetes. My aha came in the form of the phrase "love is maintenance".
Re:Repair and Remain: How to do the slow, hard, good work of staying put
on Monday August 12, 2024 @06:48PM (#41230222)
True, but I think the point of the article is that, in modern life, we tend to err strongly in the other direction.
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2024)
on Friday March 01, 2024 @05:58PM (#39567833)
Location: New Mexico
Remote: Yes, preferably or hybrid in Northern Maine
Willing to relocate: Yes, Northern Maine
Technologies:
Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
Front-end: Vanilla JS, HTMX, React, ClojureScript
Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, Java, C, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman
Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst who’s able to help clients complete stalled projects,
design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer
- Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System architecture & design
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2024)
on Thursday February 08, 2024 @04:14PM (#39307808)
Location: New Mexico
Remote: Yes, preferably or hybrid in Northern Maine
Willing to relocate: Yes, Northern Maine
Technologies:
Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
Front-end: Vanilla JS, HTMX, React, ClojureScript
Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, Java, C, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman
Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst who’s able to help clients complete stalled projects,
design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer
- Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System architecture & design
- Gaining experience with NLP & ML
Re:Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2024)
on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @03:36PM (#38931741)
SEEKING WORK | New Mexico | Remote
Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.
Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
Highlights:
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript
- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System integration & automation
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2024)
on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @03:34PM (#38931710)
Location: New Mexico
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies:
Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
Front-end: Vanilla JS, React, ClojureScript, SASS, Google Closure
Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, C, Java, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design
& deliver user-friendly data-oriented applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.
Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer
- Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System architecture & designZoom Fatigue is From Boredom not Anxiety
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2023)
on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @03:16PM (#38536370)
Location: New Mexico
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies:
Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
Front-end: Vanilla JS, React, ClojureScript, SASS, Google Closure
Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, C, Java, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design
& deliver user-friendly data-oriented applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.
Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer
- Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System architecture & design
Re:Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2023)
on Saturday December 02, 2023 @01:06AM (#38496358)
SEEKING WORK | New Mexico | Remote
Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.
Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements
Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume
Email: [email protected]
Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
Highlights:
- Over 23 years of experience
- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript
- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
- System integration & automation