73 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
73 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
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%p
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It really is like
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%a{:href => "http://worrydream.com/#!/InventingOnPrinciple"} Bret Victor
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says in his video:
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good programmers are the ones who play computer in their head well.
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%p Why? Because you have to, to program. And off course that’s what i’m doing.
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%p
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But when it got to debugging, it got a bit much. Using gdb for non C code, i mean it’s bad enough
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for c code.
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%h2#the-debugger The debugger
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%p
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The process of getting my “hello world” to work was quite hairy, what with debugging with gdb
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and checking registers and stuff. Brr.
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%p
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The idea for a “solution”, my own debugger, possibly graphical, came quite quickly. But the effort seemed a
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little big. It took a little, but then i started.
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%p
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I fiddled a little with fancy 2 or even 3d representations but couldn’t get things to work.
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Also getting used to running ruby in the browser, with opal, took a while.
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%p
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But now there is a
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%a{:href => "https://github.com/ruby-x/salama-debugger"} basic frame
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up,
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and i can see registers swishing around and ideas of what needs
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to be visualized and partly even how, are gushing. Off course it’s happening in html,
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but that ok for now.
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%p
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And the best thing: I found my first serious
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%strong bug
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visually. Very satisfying.
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%p
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I do so hope someone will pick this up and run with it. I’ll put it on the site as soon as the first
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program runs through.
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%h2#interpreter Interpreter
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%p
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Off course to have a debugger i needed to start on an interpreter.
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Now it wasn’t just the technical challenge, but some resistance against interpreting, since the whole
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idea of salama was to compile. But in the end it is a very different level that the interpreter
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works at. I chose to put it at the register level (not the arm), so it would be useful for future
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cpu’s, and because the register to arm mapping is mainly about naming, not functionality. Ie it is
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pretty much one to one.
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%p
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But off course (he says after the fact), the interpreter solves a large part of the testing
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issue. Because i wasn’t really happy with tests, and that was because i didn’t have a good
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idea how to test. Sure unit tests, fine. But to write all the little unit tests and hope the
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total will result in what you want never struck me as a good plan.
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%p
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Instead i tend to write system tests, and drop down to unit tests to find the bugs in system tests.
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But i had no good system tests, other than running the executable. But
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= succeed "." do
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%strong now i do
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%p
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So two flies with one (oh i don’t know how this goes, i’m not english), better test, and visual
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feedback, both driving the process at double speed.
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%p
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Now i “just” need a good way to visualize a static and running program. (implement breakpoints,
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build a class and object inpector, recompile on edit . . .)
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%h2#debugger-rewritten-thrice Debugger rewritten, thrice
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%p
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Update: after trying around with a
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%a{:href => "https://github.com/orbitalimpact/opal-pixi"} 2d graphics
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implementation i have rewritten the ui in
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%a{:href => "https://github.com/catprintlabs/react.rb"} react
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,
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%a{:href => "https://github.com/voltrb/volt"} Volt
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and
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= succeed "." do
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%a{:href => "https://github.com/opal/opal-browser"} OpalBrowser
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%p
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The last is what got the easiest to understand code. Also has the least dependencies, namely
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only opal and opal-browser. Opal-browser is a small opal wrapper around the browsers
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javascript functionality.
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