- macros: In news.arc, they are all over the place. So I tried to code in a similar style, but it turns out that if something can be done via a macro vs being done with a function, then it is more natural for me to use a function. I work a lot with the REPL, and it turns out to be really annoying to change a macro, and then I have to track down all the places that use that macro, and "refresh" them to use the new macro. Especially with macros that call macros that call macros, and I change the macro at the end of the chain. Whereas with a function, I just have to paste in the new function and it takes effect right away.
- news.arc stores posts in a hash table. I started off modeling ballerinc that way. But as time goes on, I am starting to move things over to plain old lists. Basically, working with a hash table pushes me into code that uses side effects to get things done, like using each. Whereas with lists, the code is usually cleaner and shorter.
- repl: using the repl on the running web server is pretty amazing. Already I have pushed changes directly to the live site. For ballerinc restarting the server takes about 10 minutes, so this has been a life saver. I don't worry about "releases" at all anymore - just make the feature, test it, and deploy it.
- the codebase is about 386 LOC. For the past week I've been adding features and doing code cleanup, and the LOC keeps going down.