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BOA: Web Scripting In Pure HTML
Dmitry Dvoinikov writes: "I'm very excited about the web scripting language I had to learn and use with the company I currently work for. It's absolutely unknown to public, used in may be dozen of places around the world.
But it's so great, I thought it deserves more publicity. So, here is the introductory article about the BOA web scripting engine. And here is its homepage if you are interested." If you know any PHP or perl, the small "hello webreaders" comparison is interesting (and Yes, favors Boa;) ).
(is there an award for "1st First Post"? Do I lose karma instantly, or will it take someone actually reading this and modding me down?)
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
There is another program called BOA (also called the BOA Constructor). It's a gui builder and IDE for python (it's quite good) which can be found here. This BOA also looks cool. It seems to have all the basic requirements to be a productive web developer (db access, regex, encapsulating html object in special tags). I might give it a try.
Wow, does BOA look limited. I can see how it would be a viable alternative for extremely simple web apps, but the lack of complexity looks pretty damned crippling to me when you start looking at deploying more complex applications.
I guess it's to cut down on the www.goatse.cx crap
What kind of irresponsible person would link to goatse.cx? Actually, since I was modded down for alluding to the goatse.cx site, I've taken the attitude of "If you can't take responsibility for what you instruct your computer to do then you'll need to be shown just how horrible some things can be out there. Mayby then, people will think about the consequences before they click on something they havn't bothered to investigate. Do the words "I LUV YOU" or "I send you this document for your comment" ring a bell?
Get the Hell off my planet, you slimy mobster Bush!
It's interesting, but I fail to see anything that makes BOA notable. Sure, it uses tags in its language (which, by the way, does *not* make BOA "absolute[ly] html"), but other than that, it's no different than PHP or ASP, et. al. In fact the BOA home page describes itself as "yet another server-side scripting language".
BOA looks nice, but I still think I'll rather take Website Meta Language - it lets me define the tags AND use Perl and other languages to build static pages.
As always, the question is why would I want yet another language like this? Is the fact that you have to use a % sign more frequently in your JSP tags really THAT much of a big deal, given that you have all of Java at your disposal?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I see this as yet another example of the mistaken idea that HTML-like tags make a language more user-friendly. Glossing over the difference between server-side code and client-side markup will only lead to confusion in the long run.
People need to understand that server-side templating systems (in the sense that includes PHP, JSP, BRL; not the limited WebMacro/Velocity definition of template), work by a sort of editorial process. I choose a syntax that acknowledges that editorial process.
Take the first example from the BOA tutorial. What's server-side instructions and what's client side markup? If you're not familiar with HTML it might be hard to tell the difference.
<setvar name=a value=1>
<strong>this is a strong <insert name=a></strong>
In contrast, the following code makes it clear what is literal HTML (what the browser will get), and what is an editorial instruction.
[(define a 1)]
<strong>this is a strong [a]</strong>
Other advantages of square-bracket syntax:
This really defines "dumbing down". The developers of BOA were simply bored. They even admit that its "just another server-side scripting language". Their description cites the flaws of real languages (like Perl) - that it is too hard, and that too many concepts must be learnt before any development can be done. What wimps.
I think that developers and designers who actually know real programming languages and real HTML (not WYSIWYG-editor crap) have a great advantage in that knowing these concepts is a good indicator of your overall intelligence - something potential employers should be looking for.
s/you/me/gix;