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Water, a Newish Web Language Out of MIT
jimdesu writes "True to its religion, MIT has reinvented LISP again, this time as a web-programming language called Water.At first blush, it looks rather interesting. It supports hashes, vectors and objects (prototype based) in a manner that makes it look as much like XML as one could possibly conceive. I'm certainly going to play with it. Anyway, the url is at http://www.waterlang.org."
I've done it all: PHP ASP Javascript, Java applets, mod_perl and the likes. I am still open to possibly a new lang that beats em all. Something thats
(1) Open
(2) Open source
(3) Works for LOTS of databasen IMAP SSL LDAP etc
(4) Flexible
(5) Compilable on everything
(6) plugs nicely into apache
(7) Possibly compiles
(8) Supports languages (i18)
(9) Doesnt blindly try to follow C++
(10) Is not so concept-based that its workings cannot be understood.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
From: http://pobox.com/~oleg/ftp/papers/ILC02-impression s.txt
* Sharpening the parentheses: bringing Lisp ideas to programming the Web
Henry Lieberman of MIT Multimedia Lab.
Henry Lieberman said that Lisp is indeed good for web
programming, but people seem to prefer sharp parentheses () to round
ones. If you can use Lisp, you should -- he said, -- but sometimes,
you're constrained: you have to accept legacy XML documents and XSLT
stylesheets. His solution: design a programming language with an XML
syntax. He went on to describe a programming language,
. As it turns out, XML syntax is indeed
unsuitable for a programming language. So, the Language 'Water' uses
some kind of a simplified XML syntax. The language is not Lisp either
-- neither in notation (which is infix), nor in semantics. It looks a
lot like a Javascript. Programs in the Water language can run either
on a server, or on the client, in a browser plug-in.
This talk left several people puzzled: at first the author
said he wanted to use XML because it's popular, and Lisp because it's
a good language. He ended up using neither. BTW, Water requires a
license for a commercial use. I drew two conclusions: first, we need
to advertise SXML better. SXML can do everything Water does -- and can
do more and better. I also need to look up Henry Lieberman's slides,
which say "Web community blew the web programming" and "web
programming collapses under its own weight." Imagine a slide: Henry
Lieberman, a colleague of Tim Berners-Lee, says: "Web programming is
collapsing under its own weight." We need to save it.
I wanted to talk with Henry Lieberman and point out that there
is another way to assure interoperability with the XML culture. Rather
than translating Lisp to XML, we can translate XML and XML tools into
Lisp. That's what the SXML talk was all about. I didn't catch him. The
conference schedule didn't leave much time for discussions. Anyway,
SXML ideas are timely, we are not doing worse than other people -- and
perhaps better.
My overall impression from that talk is disappointment: I
thought people at MIT media lab can design better languages than I do.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
"you have to accept legacy XML documents and XSLT
stylesheets"
When did XML become a 'legacy' language?
Wow, the 2nd millenium sure is moving fast!
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
XML is designed to represent data. Trying to shoehorn a procedural and OO programming language into its format is a recipe for disaster and thats exactly what these guys have come up with. Its long winded, ugly and hard to read. I really can't see any programmer wanting to work with this. There was a reason netscape invented Javascript , not some form of procedural HTML. Still , at least this language will be a lesson in how not to design one. Expect this language disappear fast except for a mention in comp sci compiler/interpreter text books and the occasion far flung outpost of masochist coders.