Playing with Go
For a long time, I’ve been unhappy with the state of Ruby for plain standalone applications. The problem is mostly the installation of a proper Ruby environment for users of the application: For the RDCL for example Ruby 1.9 is needed, but Mac OS X ships only with version 1.8.
The main need I have for the RDCL is a simple multitasking model which allows me to implement reading and writing over a serial line to the Newton while handling other tasks. It appears that Go is able to deliver exactly that via goroutines, and I started to experiment a little with that language. It would allow delivery of ready to run binaries instead of messing with installation of an interpreter first.
Go requires a bit of a mental shift though as it is not an object oriented language in the classic sense. Usually this would not be such a big problem, but almost all of the Newton’s concept are designed and implemented in an OOP way. Let’s see how it goes, in the end this is at least a nice learning experience :)