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Lasso Professional V Released
MrGHemp writes "Blueworld announced the release of Lasso V, one of the most popular middleware programs running on Mac web servers. This is a major upgrade from version 3.6.6.2 and the first to work on Mac OS X. There are a variety of new tags, and a really nice implementation of MySQL. This is exciting for the Lasso community, because now we can upgrade our web servers to Mac OS X!" Maybe now we'll see a whole rash of Mac web sites that don't crash! (Sorry, that one couldn't be helped.)
Lasso's tag based language has historically been praised for its ability to enable non-programming trained web designers to implement database connectivity and dynamic content logic to their sites. Meanwhile it also had plenty of flexibility for programmers as well.
The original LDML language is wordy, but it is very straight forward to grasp and be productive in a hurry. It's native support in the language tags for database connectivity often makes up for the wordiness, by greatly simplifying communication with the db. Lasso is very productive language.
Lasso 5 is a quite a different animal from v3. Many new tags, data constructs, and more customization abilities. Much of the wordiness can be dropped by using a new LassoScript syntax, and the "open source" for database connectors allows for much better database support which will help LP5 grow beyond the limited options available to v3.
Momentum is a big thing to overcome. If one is already familar with language X, it is unlikely he'll change--especially for people who expect everything to be free. However, Lasso's productivity advantages allows sites to be developed with fewer people in less time. To a beginner or and old-hat, it's an attractive differentiation.
I wouldn't put Lasso in the same league as PHP, Lasso competes with the likes of Cold Fusion and Roxen. The contracts that I get involved with are companies looking for a ware that has a company background (someone to blame) element. Also noticed people on here reference Lasso to the Mac community, mabey in the past but Lasso Professional 5 can sit on any of the following combinations: OS X Apache W* 5.1 W2K IIS Apache and the source is open for someone to make their name in making more connectors available. I know that the Linux Red Hat version is coming out soon too, so to say this is a Mac related product is now out of the window! My two cents!