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."

Comments

Interesting combinations of programming languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Water + PROLOG = Waterlog
Water + Java = Kaffe

Would a very large program written in Water be called Sea? Get it? Sea? C?

Talk about diving into some Water programming. If you are under a lot of water programming, would you be drowning with work?

Gator based on Ada and Water = Gatorada

I'll shut up now.

Re:Highly Biased Examples?

[aminorex]

I have to agree with you.

My impression is that the Water vs. JSP example
is a poor one because JSP is designed for a
different scale of complexity and level of control.
The overhead for JSP programming is quite large,
but as a result of buying into it's infrastructure,
you get a lot of library support. That makes it
suitable for large-scale development, where functional
components need to be finely factored and real-world
issues like deployment methods and human resource
application come into play. It's also a poor
example for showing the benefits of Water (of which
I admit ignorance) because it makes Water look
like a toy.

Think about a Hello, World program.

Basic:
Print "Hello, World!"

C:
#include
int main (int * ac, char ** av) {
printf("Hello, World!\n");
}

Java:
import java.lang.*;
package org.slashdot.examples;
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String args[]) {
System.out.println("Hello, World!");
System.exit(0);
}
}

Each of these is increasingly verbose and complex,
yet who would argue that it was more complicated
and difficult to develop and maintain a typical
3-tier application in Java than in Basic?

Of course the cost of entry is not a definitive
indicator of the leverage offered by a platform!
(format t "Hello, World!%n")
is pretty straightforward, but CommonLISP is a
very sophisticated and highly leveragable
environment. It may well be that Water has
inherited a similar scalability, but the example
fails to show this, by virtue of its triviality.