On Wed, 2 May 2001, Russell Turpin wrote:
--]languages, I think there are more important issues. Or at least
--]more topical ones.
Oh im liking this already.
--]
--]Communications is key. More, there is some stability. Relational
--]databases, HTTP, and XML are not going away any time soon. The
--]languages that are exciting today are the "glue" languages that
--]best bridge that chasm, such as Python, where any piece of XML
--]can be objectified instanter. But even these rely largely on
--]modules and dynamicity to more closely integrate with the "world
--]out there." Their core abstractions are still those that define
--]an internal world. Is this really the right way to do things for
--]the next two decades of software development? Is it time for a
--]computer language that deals directly with the "world out there"?
--]And how would we define such a language?
--]
IM not sure this is totoaly apprapos to this thread, but thats never
stoped me before...
For myself, I am gravitating to methods and languages that are
able to deal with the "world out there" stuff just as it would internal
stuff, or more to the point treats the world out there as part of itself.
The internal world view is great if you then want to spend lot of time
building up embeseys to talk to all the other internal worlds. You then
train your embasadors to talk thier talk and walk thier walk and report
back to you in terms your internal worlds workings undertand.
Im not sure if what we are doing these days is making each internal world
be able to deal with others or simply making one big world that encompases
those disperate parts.
Just as HTML statlessness cusaed a whole dump truck worths of layers and
languages to be smushed on top of it so to I think many traditioanl
languages have problems dealign with an unkown totality of itself. This, I
think, stems form the issue of control , not so much of the languge but
those who make and use it.
So to I think that a lot of the interconnectedness methods could well be
done in pretty much any language, maybe not effeciently or elegantly, but
well enough to make something greater than its parts, or in this case its
internal worlds worth.
"communication is key" is turning out to be the phrase that pays. The
stuff that really catches my eye and mindshare these days are those things
that can communicate across the spaces of worldsets. Freenet and freeweb
are nice examples of code making the subether on which to connect the
worlds.
Just some quick thoughts on the topic.
--tom_wsmf
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