Edge Cases

The Plumber's Guide to Blocks

Andrew Pontious talks with Wolf Rentzsch about blocks: their history, why they’re weird, and why Apple should have just gone ahead and made them an Objective-C API.

Links:

• Williams sisters « Wikipedia
• Asterisk and Obelisk « The Powers of Observation
• Asterix « Wikipedia
• You Can’t Run a Script to Test Feel « Edge Cases
• Automatic for the People « The Powers of Observation
• Automatic for the People, R.E.M. album « Wikipedia
• Language Specification for Blocks « clang
• Blocks (C Language Extension) « Wikipedia
• Blocks Programming Topics: Introduction
• Basic Blocks « bbum’s weblog-o-mat
• Boost Lambda Library « Wiki Wiki Web
• The Good, the Bad, and the Avie « Daring Fireball
• Technical Note TN2034 via Daring Fireball
• Apple’s Extensions to C « Open Standards
• /compiler-rt/trunk « llvm-project
• Colin Barrett tweet: “Don’t miss this http://llvm.org/devmtg/2012-11/Gregor-Modules.pdf” (Modules proposal by Doug Gregor of Apple)
• Programming with C Blocks on Apple Devices, by Joachim Bengtsson

Rejected Episode Titles:

• Carry the FU Torch
• “You Speak German?” “Ja”
• Instead of Writing a How-To I Wrote a Me-Too
• I Do Not Volunteer to Write a Blog Post About It
• Using the Word Block When You Don’t Mean Block
• A Float, a Struct, and an Objective-C Object Pointer Walk into a Bar
• In These Glorious Days of ARC
• Comma YES, Comma NO, Comma YES, Comma NO
• Beating Heart of C++
• Beat Back the Lambda Menace
• I’m with Wil Shipley on This
• Trying to Rehabilitate C Itself
• Well, That Was Wrong
• I’m on the Siracusa Side
• I Can’t Think of a Way That GCC Is Better
• Blocks Are Weird, Man!
• “I’m Gonna Have to Give Up the Dream, Aren’t I?” “Yeah”
• I Don’t Think They’re Going to Do It, But I Think That Would Help
• A Fine Coping Strategy, I Suppose