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X# Functional Programming from Microsoft?

Posted by timothy on from the rumor-pile dept.

TheSync writes "SearchWebServices.Com has an article claiming that Microsoft is working on a functional language named 'X#'. The language is supposed to be data-oriented and LISP-like, but set up to handle XML."

85 comments

  1. Humorists! by avalys · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Microsoft is working on a functional language...".

    Heh...funny. We're finally getting some humor around here.

    --
    This space intentionally left blank.
  2. Is .NET .DEAD yet? by MacAndrew · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been waiting for the .ANNOUNCEMENT, but .MAYBE I'm .HOPING for too .MUCH.

  3. You know.. in music.. by MarvinMouse · · Score: 5, Funny

    Being sharp isn't a good thing... It's actually common for singers who don't know how to sing to sing sharp... Yet, Microsoft likes C#, and X# (X isn't even a note this time.) I am excited though. I am waiting for someone to tune Microsoft a bit and perhaps release b-flat, or perhaps D##.

    Sometimes being sharp is useful (in the right key), but if you already know the key is C, C# is not a good note to hit.

    --
    ~ kjrose
    1. Re:You know.. in music.. by Alethes · · Score: 4, Funny

      but if you already know the key is C, C# is not a good note to hit.

      Tell that to any of the jazz guys that like the sound of a flat-9. :)

      Yeah, offtopic. Who cares?

    2. Re:You know.. in music.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Bah! You tonality freaks get me everytime. "Oooh, I play music in a 'key', look at me". "Oooh, I select notes that 'sound good', I'm so special".

      Personally, I just bang my fists like hunks of meat into the keyboard, giving rise to a rhythmic cocaphany of clusters and un-harmonies. As I pummel the black and white monster with my hands I hear the sounds of our society, mechanized and dissonant, like a great hulking beast trampling all things beautiful. I weep a single tear as I consider that each note is a human life, stomped out again and again by the wandering beast.

      Well actually I can't play the piano at all but this helps me hide that fact.

    3. Re:You know.. in music.. by RaboKrabekian · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Being sharp isn't a good thing... It's actually common for singers who don't know how to sing to sing sharp

      Wrong. Being out of key is bad, yes. Being slightly sharp or slightly flat is out of key. Just being sharp simply means being one semi-tone higher. In the key of G, F# is perfectly in key. This post is just flaimbait, bashing Microsoft for no real reason.

      --
      "Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
    4. Re:You know.. in music.. by MarvinMouse · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      OT: I know...

      Yeah, but even then, that flat-9 is added for the effect that it is out of tune..

      C# has it's place in a key of C song, just it shouldn't be used totally.

      --
      ~ kjrose
    5. Re:You know.. in music.. by clearcache · · Score: 2

      Besides...a flatted ninth in the key of C is a Db, not a C#...

      (I used to want to hit people in my theory classes that said stuff like that...before they could utter the phrase "Enharmonic Equivalent")

    6. Re:You know.. in music.. by IXI · · Score: 1

      I am waiting for someone to tune Microsoft a bit and perhaps release b-flat, [...]

      Impossible, M$ depends on their shares price to rise, but for two years in a row they don't.
      Imagine them to b-flat for the future, and M$ goes broke.

      --
      He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
  4. Miguel! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 2

    Are you porting GNU/Emacs to .mono yet?

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re:Miguel! by RevAaron · · Score: 2

      Actually, an Emacs-like editor for .NET/Mono would be pretty cool. It'd be great to have an interpreted/incrementally compiled language with .NET access (SmallScript, a Lisp dialect) as the scripting or main language of this Emacs.NET- you could use Emacs to modify and extend your entire .NET computing environment.

      --

      Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
    2. Re:Miguel! by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      I thought I found someone that let you do literacy programming in MS Word - but it wasn't as cool as I hoped. What you did was:

      * In word you type your high level runable specification and document it in literacy programming style.

      * Then you convert the word document to an xml programming language.

      * Then run the xml in .NET and compare the output to your actual implementation and check the fit.

      I really hope the MS people don't beat us to a decent literacy programming ui.

  5. yow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    can you say "Safari rending bug"?

  6. Old news by bringert · · Score: 1

    This press release from 1998 talks about Microsoft adopting Haskell (a purely functional language with lazy evaluation).

  7. Calling XML a programming language by rollthelosindice · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Does anyone else get upset when XML is called a "programming language"? I mean, just because an acronym ends in the letter L doesn't make it a "programming language".

    1. Re:Calling XML a programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't say I really even hear people say that... It *is* a markup language, hence the ML, and I occasionaly hear that, but no, I don't hear programming language all that often.

      I mean, people would be saying that if everyone was as stupid as you must think they are... But they aren't. I'm sorry. Marketers and Management aren't stupid. They're looking at things with something besides an eye for technology. Of course, it makes it nice for you to call them stupid, because that means that you can validate yourself. Then you don't even have to ask the question of why you don't change things and become the technologically competent manager or marketer, and you can live your crappy smarter-than-thou life from your parents basement.

      HTH.

      -Andrew

    2. Re:Calling XML a programming language by seann · · Score: 1

      What I define as a language, is if you can make an IRC Client out of it, its a programming or scripting language.

      --
      I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
    3. Re:Calling XML a programming language by grammar+nazi · · Score: 2
      Please allow the grammar nazi to clear things up:

      [snip] considering a new XML programming language

      The author of the article doesn't refer to XML as a programming language here. He only mentions that the new programming language will be based around XML. Actually, later in the article, he speculates that the language will be *lisp-ish* so who knows if MS will do a functional programming language or not. Although the author relates XML to a programming language later in the article, each time, he doesn't explicitly state that XML is a programming language. Just because XML has a strong affinity towards functional programming languages doesn't mean that he's stating that XML is a programming language.

      --

      Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
    4. Re:Calling XML a programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a long tradition in the Unix community to elevate file formats to a "language". This supports their anti-binary bias.

    5. Re:Calling XML a programming language by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      I don't understand your point. Sure there are many file formats that are turing complete - pdf, etc along with the data files that come with just about every game, but I don't understand what this hsa to do with supporting 'an anti-binary bias'?

    6. Re:Calling XML a programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I find it more annoying (and more common) for HTML to be called a programming language.

    7. Re:Calling XML a programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Generally, the idea is to avoid binary file formats so that you don't need a special tool to create the content. The consuming application is supposed to do all the work even if it makes it slower.

    8. Re:Calling XML a programming language by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      Hmm.. nope still don't get it. You could just as easily have a generic tool to output a binary file instead of a plain text file.

      What do you mean by the application having to do all the work? Do you mean as opposed to libraries - if so you just said that we use plain text files so we use generic libraries..

      Can you be more verbose and give an example?

    9. Re:Calling XML a programming language by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Let see, Unix runs on what, a baziliion platforms? Windows run on 1 (used to run on Power PC and Alpha too, and CE runs on ARM). So make that perhaps 4.

      Thing is, that anti-binary bias is

      a) What makes Unix so multi-platform and

      b) makes Unix so eminiently malleable and hackable. Think anything in /etc. Think registry in Windoze

      It is much easier to edit a text file than a binary file. For one, you can read it. For two, the fact that a text file tends to make things like whitespace ignorable makes it easier and less brittle which leads to more relibale software. If the programs EXPECTS there to be variable amounts of whitespace it compensates which is not true of a binary-reading program which always expects the structures and bits in precisely the correct places and goes wahmmo when something is out of whack.

      The difference is like that between a finely tuned racecar and your VW. The one can take more abuse because it is not so dependent on anything being precisley aligned.

      Binary may be faster (like the racecar) but it is also more brittle and less reliable (again, racecar...)

      The multiplatform thing is easy. Binary is dependent on byte order, the amount of bits-per-wors and such things. Many graphics programs on a PC can still not read Mac created TIFF files to this very day because of this.

      A text file, as long as you use ASCII can be read on any friggin platform. There are some issues with character sets and Unicode and so, but that is much simpler to solve. For one, you can eyeball the file to see whats wrong with it.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    10. Re:Calling XML a programming language by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      Right.. Thank you for a 100% accurate but totally offtopic reply. Go read what the AC was claiming, and what I was challenging.

    11. Re:Calling XML a programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Marketers and Management aren't stupid.
      Someboddy mod that funny, pls.

    12. Re:Calling XML a programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HTML for example. For most people it would be easier to have a GUI tool to set the layout of elements. Such tools exist, of course, but the output is in ASCII because that is what HTML requires. It would be more efficient to use a binary representation, but that would preclude being able to easily create a web page with a text editor.

      So, what I mean about the consuming application having to do all the work is that the translation from layout to presentation is done only by the the consuming application, there is no machine intelligence on the front end to make the delivery and rendering faster.

      I realize that there are some cross-platform issues involved, but just becuase it's binary doesn't mean it has to be native to a particular machine.

      On the other hand, I wonder if the ability to be compatible with very obscure architectures requires too high a price. Perhaps it would be better if a server could deliver platform-specific binary for the top 10 platforms, and only drop down to the LCD when it encounters a fringe system. I doubt that it will ever happen though.

    13. Re:Calling XML a programming language by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2


      It makes no difference _one bit_ to the application whether the file format is in text or binary as long as it has a library to parse that format.

      There has to be a program that takes a file format and converts it into a format the program can use. Then the program takes this and say renders it.
      Are you suggesting that we skip the first step, and instead make the file basically a raw dump of memory? Then when you want to read in the data you just dump it back into memory.

      This will work, but unfortunetly lacks flexibility. If you have a version mismatch between the program and the dumped-data then it will go spectacly wrong because the data structures would have to be exactly the same. If you change your processor then it will go wrong unless the alignment etc is exactly the same. If you upgrade any libraries it will go wrong.

      There are indeed some places where you can use this however - emacs is a good example. This is what the precompiled .el files are (.elc). Emacs loads in a lisp file, parses it, then does a raw memory dump back to disk. Then when it next needs the .el file, instead of parsing it, it just dumps the file back into memory. Note that you still keep around the .el incase anything changes. (.el files are programs, but in lisp data files are programs)

    14. Re:Calling XML a programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "It makes no difference _one bit_ to the application whether the file format is in text or binary as long as it has a library to parse that format."

      Actually, it makes many bits of difference. Each HTML tag could be represented in binary in two bytes. That's a lot fewer bits than using ASCII.

      "If you have a version mismatch between the program and the dumped-data then it will go spectacly wrong because the data structures would have to be exactly the same."

      If you change the string for a tag on the consuming end without changing it on the front end your going to have a problem. So mismatches are not unique to binary.

      Anyway, I've said enough on this subject.

    15. Re:Calling XML a programming language by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      The application doesn't care if it takes few bits or not.

      If the tag name changes then your app could just support old formats, or it could covert old formats to the new one. You have no chance of doing this with binary.

    16. Re:Calling XML a programming language by chrisseaton · · Score: 2

      When they 'XML programming language' I think they mean something like foo==10foo=barfoo=baz. As in, a programming language written in XML.

  8. what's the difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    between that and

    #include ????

  9. Why Not XSLT? by marvinx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't XSLT a functional language? It's a wonderfully helpful tool when working with XML. How would another language (X#?) help the situation?

    I'd love to see more XSLT systems be built. XSLT becomes powerful when everything is XML, and everything can be obtained via HTTP. This is why Web Services (SOAP/etc) won't take off the way the web has. You can't address the object in a Web Service, you can only address its proxy. Not to mention that all of those objects have some odd proprietary interface to them, instead of the ubiquitous GET/PUT/DELETE of HTTP.

    Wow, I really went off topic.

    To sum up: Use XSLT!

    1. Re:Why Not XSLT? by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      I was surprised by your comment - I didn't think xslt was powerful enough. But a second of googling showed it is indeed turing complete.

    2. Re:Why Not XSLT? by __past__ · · Score: 5, Interesting
      XSLT may be turing complete, but at a general-purpose programming language, it sucks. Even for complex XML transformations, it gets messy. Would you like to write

      <call-template name="split-string">
      <with-param name="string" select="$s">
      <with-param name="delimiter" select=" "/>
      </call-template>
      instead of
      split_string($s, " ")
      every time? That all input has to be well-formed XML doesn't help either. XSLT is useful, but for a limited domain.
      --
      Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
  10. Oy... by Viqsi · · Score: 1

    Okay, I'm convinced that this is April 1st in disguise. First the quardruple-speed browser, then the SCO patent issue, then the porno cellphones, and now this - Microsoft Lisp.

    --

    --
    viqsi - See "vixen"
    If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
    1. Re:Oy... by DiscoOnTheSide · · Score: 2, Funny

      MS Lisp? I bet $10 that much like calling Microsoft Micro$oft and calling VB "VD" this will get the insulting name...."microthoft" *rimshot* :)

      --
      Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
    2. Re:Oy... by MrBlack · · Score: 2

      Why is it that your typical slash-dotter is always a day late and a dollar short with their Microsoft jabs? There is a simple lisp compiler in the .NET SDK (called clisp). It should be located somewhere around
      $FrameworkSDK$\Tool Developers Guide\Samples\clisp.
      (from the clisp readme page)

      CLisp is a sample lisp compiler, which compiles to MSIL. CLisp is developed in C# and uses reflection emit to generate MSIL. It can also be adapted as an interpreter if the generated MSIL is executed dynamically instead of persisting to a PE file.

      Also since M$ is so heavily pushing .NET at universities there are also a number of functional programming languages that target the CLR. You can find a fairly comprehensive list of .NET languages here http://www.jasonbock.net/dotnetlanguages.html

    3. Re:Oy... by __past__ · · Score: 2
      Great choice of a name, then, since there is also Gnu CLISP, one of the better known free lisps (used by Yahoo's ViaWeb, for example).

      However, wasn't Microsoft Bob implemented largely in Lisp? So MS does have Lisp experience, maybe just not the best...

      --
      Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
    4. Re:Oy... by MrBlack · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure if the .NET clisp is CLOS compliant....I'm guessing they called it clisp because it is written in C# (or because it targets the CLR), and I agree that it it is annoying the overloading of the clisp name. M$ has done this also with the CLI (in .NETspeak the Common Language Infrastructure, but for unix wonks the Command Line Interface). Anyhow...

  11. What good are functional languages? by gangien · · Score: 0, Troll

    I mean, take scheme for instance, we've used it in college to to parse lists and stuff. which is all well and good, but can Scheme or LISP be used for any real development? Not to mention any program you can make, can easily be ported to C++, but of course being in college around professors, C++ is the root of all evil heh

    (define (troll? usr)
    (cond
    [(> (user-int usr) 15) false]
    [else true]))

    1. Re:What good are functional languages? by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      Uh there are many many documents on lisp on the web along with studies that show that using lisp can speed up development. (actually they only show that people that use lisp devel faster - there can be other reasons why this relationship exists other than direct causality.)

    2. Re:What good are functional languages? by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

      Just for a few examples of where a lisp-like language is used - just about any game, AI, knowledge based systems, etc.

    3. Re:What good are functional languages? by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I dunno. Depends on what you mean by "real development". The main limiting factor seems to be the number of people who know Lisp well. If I had to hire a team to do a project in Lisp, I'd probably have to train them all. However, I used to know many very, very smart people who designed complex real world systems in Lisp. They just tended to work in a rather rarified stratosphere of problem domains: not your payroll and website kind of stuff, but horrible, complex and intractable problems.

      Lisp is a great hackers language, because it seems like you can code as a way of thinking about a problem, an approach that is usually disasterous. Perhaps the awful syntax makes a necessity of the virtue of abstraction. I'd guess that in part this is because programs are data , rather than organizing things around compilation units, which leads to a differnt kind of rhythm to programming.

      I wonder whether anybody has used extreme programming with Lisp; it seems like the lisp tendency to build small compact bits of code would be a natural fit.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:What good are functional languages? by hding · · Score: 3, Funny

      can Scheme or LISP be used for any real development?

      Gee, I hope so. Otherwise a lot of the software I've written for my employer's trading business the past few years isn't real.

    5. Re:What good are functional languages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In my experience, Lisp programming becomes "XP by default" - Lispers have always recognised the 2 people to a machine benefits, and everything else in XP just sort of follows from the nature of lisp.

    6. Re:What good are functional languages? by gangien · · Score: 1

      this would be why I asked, I've never seen anything more than AI stuff done in LISP.

    7. Re:What good are functional languages? by hding · · Score: 2

      Then you probably want links like Franz success stories, or perhaps this from ALU. Or Digitool. And of course these are just Common Lisp references; you can surely dig up similar things for other languages as well.

  12. Can we just put and end to this already m$ by Neck_of_the_Woods · · Score: 3, Funny


    Just go ahead and take every language that you did not have a hand in and make something like it.

    Maybe just give it a couple of things here and there to make it work better with microsoft products and slap a # on some letter.

    This killing us slowly with your "new" stuff is well...killing me.

    The next thing you know they are going to be taking something like unix and adding a letter to it and calling it the greatest thing sence sliced bread...oh wait, someone already did that with an L... guess you missed that one but you can steal it!

    --
    Neck_of_the_Woods
    #/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
    1. Re:Can we just put and end to this already m$ by JohnFluxx · · Score: 5, Interesting
      They had to do it. .NET was NOT designed for functional languages. They tried to add on supported with something called idx

      However when they came to try to port something like haskal over to it, they found it just wouldn't fit(See page 18) so they had to make do with a sort of bridge instead.

      So what I think they've done is taken a functional language, taken out the features that don't fit well with .net (untyped terms?) and called it a "feature" :)

      I'm way out of my depth on this though - hopefully by providing links someone cleverer than me will correct me.

  13. I see the plan. . . by Bastian · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    1. Expand .NET framework to cater to the 50 or so programmers out there who like both M$ and functional programming.
    2. ???????
    3. PROFIT!

    1. Re:I see the plan. . . by Ouroboro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      1. Expand .NET framework to cater to the 50 or so programmers out there who like both M$ and functional programming.
      2. ???????
      3. PROFIT!

      You want to know the funny thing... I interviewed at MS (Yes I know I'm a whore). I didn't get the job. I think the primary reason was that durring the whole interview I was bagging on CS curriculums that made use of functional programming languages. It just so happens that at least two of the interviewers were big fans of functional programming. One of them had even studied under one of the people who was responsible for big chunks of the Scheme language specification. I guess there are two take aways from this. One, know more about the backgrounds of those who interview you. Two, don't underestimate the number of programmers who like both ms and functional programming. I manage to find two of them in the same room.

      --
      When I want your opinion I will beat it out of you.
    2. Re:I see the plan. . . by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Actually many of the developers on the Haskell spec now works for Microsoft, specifically AFAIK in the Intentional Programming Project that now seems to have been spun off.

      This is pretty cool actually. FP is great, if Microsoft pushes it hard then it might become something that makes the world a better place.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  14. Wrong by sporty · · Score: 5, Informative

    "You can't just import an XML file and magically have it available to your program. You have to first put it through some sort of transformation, which requires work that is unnatural or unwieldy." -- Sean McGrath

    yes you can

    --

    -
    ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only

  15. Re:DUH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can't just import ANY t-file and magically have it available to your program. You have to PARSE it first.

  16. Alternatives by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

    I was looking for a way to do a lot of XML processing in a lisp like language. Any suggestions other than this?

    1. Re:Alternatives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lisp?

      Er, I mean (lisp-p)

    2. Re:Alternatives by opiate · · Score: 3, Informative

      What you want to look at for processing XML in a "lisp-like language" (Scheme) is SXML and its related packages (SXPath, etc.)

      These are packages for manipulating and representing XML content in Scheme programs.

      XML can be seen as a syntax tree, right? XSL and its friends are tree manipulation tools.

      The same can be said for Lisp and Lisp-like languages, whose "program as data" philosophy (and 35 years of history) focuses on program evaluation as tree transformation and manipulation (through nested lists.)

      SXML is a translation of XML from its heavy angle-bracket syntax to a Scheme sexpr (Scheme/Lisp's bracket expression syntax) syntax (and back to XML again.) It's extremely powerful.

      It's worth looking at if you spend large amounts of time manipulating XML data.

    3. Re:Alternatives by vbweenie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Try also HaXml, Haskell's answer to the same question. David Mertz has an article on it here.

      --
      Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn no other.
  17. Water language and X# by Mike.Plusch · · Score: 3, Informative

    X# sounds like it is trying to achieve some of the goals of the Water language (Water posting on Nov 22, 2002.) Given that XML standards are used for defining APIs, data types, data, RPC, and presentation, it only seems logical to extend XML to handle general purpose logic. Working with XML from Java feels like writing a Java program using C libraries -- everything is a foreign call.

  18. M$ 32 comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    US Government 65161652651, hmmmmm. . .
    Must increase publicity.
    I'll launch a .Campaign!!!

    -Bill Gates
    This guy has me figured out

  19. Just a proprietary xquery? by etedronai · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am highly skeptical of things like this because it seems to just be microsoft attempting to control an xml based data language as a reaction to a similar open language, xquery, being developed by the w3c.

    1. Re:Just a proprietary xquery? by dolmen.fr · · Score: 1

      Or may be, XQuery mixed with REBOL ?

  20. Microsoft over-marketed itself into obscurity by zaqattack911 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have a feeling this X# language will be even less adopted then even C#.

    Basically, if anyone has being paying attention to the news... it seems the upcoming windows .NET server is being renamed to windows 2003 server. Why? remember those useless non-specific .NET adds on TV, in magazines everwhere?

    "That's business with .NET" Apparently MS marketers have discovered that they pushed the ".NET" trademark so hard... that the public is confused and the original meaning of .NET technology has been completely lost amoung all the hype.

    Goes to show that sometimes millions spent on advertizing doesn't always make a product:)

    I guess this is a little offtopic... but it sounds to me that X# will most likely be absorbed by the marketing mess that is .NET.

    Good riddance:)

    --Zuchini

    P.S. I can't spell, cuz I'm lazy.

  21. it's bogus by nickos · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'd love to think that Haskell was getting this kind of attention, but text at the bottom of the page reads:

    "This bogus press release made the rounds on April Fools Day, 1998. Not long after this was released, Simon Peyton Jones announced his move to Microsoft (an event that caught the author of this press release by complete suprise!)."

    1. Re:it's bogus by bringert · · Score: 1

      That, and the fact that I found it on the Haskell Humor page sort of tipped me off...

      Interestingly enough, Simon Peyton Jones does seem to work for Microsoft.

  22. X Hash ? or by DrSkwid · · Score: 2

    1. They've been through re-hab
    2. No need for creating hash lookups any more
    3. X Sharp = Blunt

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  23. Or just actually use Lisp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Both Common Lisp and Scheme have long had packages for transforming XML (a language with EVEN WORSE syntax than Lisp) into Lisp and back again.

    And a decent Common Lisp compiler absolutely smokes .net or java.

  24. good rhetoric but low on fact by DrSkwid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The next thing you know they are going to be taking something like unix and adding a letter to it and calling it the greatest thing sence sliced bread

    August 1980: Microsoft announces XENIX OS, a portable operating system for various 16-bit microprocessors. XENIX is an interactive, multi-user, multi-tasking system. It will be able to run all of Microsoft's existing system software, and also be compatible with the programs written for UNIX OS.

    [Xenix was actually an OEM version of Unix licensed by ATT]

    August 1984: Microsoft announces that it will use XENIX and MS-DOS for its new personal computer, the IBM PC AT. The new PC sets the standards in multi-user systems. Both of its operating systems support the Intel APX-286 microprocessor.

    see here and here

    As for Linux :
    July 1991
    > Message-ID:
    > Date: 3 Jul 91 10:00:50 GMT
    >
    > Hello netlanders,
    >
    > Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix
    > standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably)
    > machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be
    > nice.

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  25. Re:Alternatives (Water -- www.waterlang.org) by Mike.Plusch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Christopher Fry and Mike Plusch have developed the Water language. Christopher Fry was one of the original developers on Macintosh Common Lisp when it was Coral Software. Water was designed to be as easy as Basic, but give you all the power (and more) of Lisp. Water was designed to support both object-oriented programming and functional programming. It uses the ConciseXML syntax and uses the syntax for data, logic, and presentation. Water is an All-Level Language because it can be used for both high-level and low-level tasks.

  26. Re:Alternatives (Water -- www.waterlang.org) by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2

    Hmm, not OS unfortunetly. I wouldn't want to do any major coding in something with no OS implementation..

  27. Re:Alternatives (Water -- www.waterlang.org) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What utter rubbish. "all the power (and more) of Lisp". As if. And your language is proprietary.

    I'll stick to Common Lisp, thanks.

  28. X# is not a new language by Utopia · · Score: 2, Informative

    The article is largely incorrect.

    X# is an extenstion to C# to enable easy quering and manipulation of XML data; layered on top of XQuery.

  29. Wrong Name, F# by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Old news, see the real details here: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/ilx/fsharp. htm

  30. Is it a new language ? by mlevils · · Score: 1

    There is an article in /. called "Water, a Newish Web Language Out of MIT" about a functional language created at MIT (www.waterlang.org).

  31. This would actually be pretty cool by jbolden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First off I'm not sure whether to give this any weight. We have an article quoting a guy who doesn't even claim to have much inside knowledge about what is going on. The only thing I can throw in is that the head of Microsoft language development is looking for languages that handle niche problems much better than high performance general purpose languages even at the cost of drastically reduced performance; that is Microsoft is seriously considering another major scripting language even further from C++/Java than VB is. So this X# rummor does fit with the known facts; which is far short of saying its true.

    But anyway lets assume it is true. I think it would be absolutely wonderful. C is a great language in terms of performance, its a terrible language in terms of just about everything else: to use the old 60's expression
    C programers know the cost of everything and the value of nothing while LISP programers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing. Once Microsoft included a functional language as part of Visual Studio it would open people's minds regarding all sorts of different paradigms, the same way that Visual Basic opened people's mind to event driven programming. Functional programming is very very powerful; and in some ways very natural.

    Its becoming increasing obvious that writing high performance software is killing the ability for people to write understandable software. Imagine you file saving routines could be as easy as:
    write_to_file(filename,(data_structure_dump(d ocume nt_data_structure));
    Where data_structure_dump was generic (like Perl's datadumper) and part of the language.

    Somebody below made the comment about Lisp being an excellent language for thinking about a problem while you are coding. I agree; why not have programs evolve naturally from programmers understanding the problem? Then the code gets cleaned up; and at the end the ineffecient loops that are killing performance get taken out and replaced by C++. I think that's a lot better than writing the program multiple times using: very detailed requirements then use cases then UML then C++. Why not have the use cases be the prototype for the program?

    Finally this is a minor point but C, C++ and JAVA all have terrible terrible string manipulation. Why can't they have native to_data("Jan 1, 1983") or at least have:
    string a = string("76" + 23)// a = "7623"
    int x = int("76" + 23); // x = 99

    Anyway while this barely qualifies as a rummor I certainly hope it is true. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this thread pass it up the chain that this is one customer who would be thrilled with X#.

    1. Re:This would actually be pretty cool by infront314 · · Score: 1
      Finally this is a minor point but C, C++ and JAVA all have terrible terrible string manipulation. Why can't they have native to_data("Jan 1, 1983") or at least have:
      string a = string("76" + 23)// a = "7623"
      int x = int("76" + 23); // x = 99

      Wouldn't this require lazy evaluation? C, C++ and Java don't have that. In those languages "76" + 23 is evaluated first, before the casting operation is applied.

    2. Re:This would actually be pretty cool by jbolden · · Score: 2

      I don't know I think it could happen at the parser level. "76"+23 is going somewhere so that parser could notice this and

      string("76"+23) becomes
      string_plus(string("76"), string(23)) which finally becomes
      string a = string_plus("76", int_to_string(23));

      Similarly for the int case.

    3. Re:This would actually be pretty cool by lkaos · · Score: 2

      First off I'm not sure whether to give this any weight. We have an article quoting a guy who doesn't even claim to have much inside knowledge about what is going on. The only thing I can throw in is that the head of Microsoft language development is looking for languages that handle niche problems much better than high performance general purpose languages even at the cost of drastically reduced performance;

      Am I the only one that notices the irony of you saying this guy has no basis to make such claims when you in fact are making more claims when you also have no basis? :)

      C is a great language in terms of performance, its a terrible language in terms of just about everything else:

      I would argue this for a lot of reasons. Namely, the simply fact that C's only form of code organization is functions which are inherently expensive to call (ignore inline for the moment since its new to C99). Also, recursive algorithms often have to be rethought since C-recursive is very expensive.

      write_to_file(filename,(data_structure_dump(docume nt_data_structure));
      Where data_structure_dump was generic (like Perl's datadumper) and part of the language.

      As oppossed to:

      ofstream(filename) << docnt_data_struct;

      In C++, every data structure can specialize the ostream insertion operator and get the above for free. If you really wanted to get a default (which for most structures is utterly useless), simply inherent from a common base class.

      Finally this is a minor point but C, C++ and JAVA all have terrible terrible string manipulation. Why can't they have native to_data("Jan 1, 1983") or at least have:
      string a = string("76" + 23)// a = "7623"
      int x = int("76" + 23); // x = 99

      Umm, its called boost::lexical_cast() or boost::date();

      As for the second examples, that's just ambiguous. Try:

      std::string a = std::string("76") + boost::lexical_cast(23);
      int x = boost::lexical_cast("76") + 23;

      What you are arguing for, is a weakly typed language that assumes the programmer is never going to do anything interesting. Anyone who's tryed to develop a reasonably sized project in such a language knows better.

      And BTW, regardding this comment:

      the same way that Visual Basic opened people's mind to event driven programming.

      Event driven paradigms where driven simply because MS implemented Win31 with that model (long before VB ever existed). Event driven paradigms are absolutely horrible. Managing more than one thing via events is terribly difficult.

      Signal/slots are a much more compelling model. MS is already caused enough damage to the programming community, I can just imagine what will come next...

      --
      int func(int a);
      func((b += 3, b));
    4. Re:This would actually be pretty cool by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Am I the only one that notices the irony of you saying this guy has no basis to make such claims when you in fact are making more claims when you also have no basis? :)

      I used my get out of jail free card 1st sentance, 2nd paragraph, "But anyway lets assume it is true." :-)

      Namely, the simply fact that C's only form of code organization is functions which are inherently expensive to call (ignore inline for the moment since its new to C99).

      Remember the comparisons here are to languages like LISP. Especially given lots of registers and most simple functions compiling to inline I'm not sure its possible to do much better than C/C++. I guess what are thinking of that is much better?

      As oppossed to:

      ofstream(filename)

      Exactly! The differences is in languages like Perl the default is quite useful it fully describes the structure in an easy human format which also happens to be essentially "eval()"able back to the same datastructure. The result is you don't need to write your own casting of your document as an ostream or complex overloading for std::string a = std::string("76") + boost::lexical_cast(23);
      int x = boost::lexical_cast("76") + 23;

      That actually doesn't work you need to past what you are boosing from and to which means all you are getting is a collection of macros looking up the right conversion functions and these are still hard to use. I think passing the job to the parser makes sense. I don't have any problem with the method I just don't see why the programmer should need to think about it.

      What you are arguing for, is a weakly typed language that assumes the programmer is never going to do anything interesting. Anyone who's tryed to develop a reasonably sized project in such a language knows better.

      I don't disagree with you. I think having weak typing offers a genuine advantage. The fact that you see it as a major difference from strong typing proves my point that they really are quite different.
      But what do you mean by interesting? A great deal of what's interesting in rigid languages becomes rather easy in "weakly typed ones" and thus not all that interesting anymore.

      As for the event driven stuff; my point was not that Microsoft used event driven but that VB is what brought event driven to the mainstream. Regardless of whether you think this is a good thing or not I doubt you'd disagree.

    5. Re:This would actually be pretty cool by lkaos · · Score: 1

      std::string a = std::string("76") + boost::lexical_cast(23);
      int x = boost::lexical_cast("76") + 23;

      Note: that lexical_cast should be boost::lexical_cast<int>("76"). HTML is surely not C++ friendly...

      --
      int func(int a);
      func((b += 3, b));
  32. Why Wait For A Microsoft Product to Do This? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Using Kawa , which is way of compiling Scheme into Java bitecode, you could create web services and such.

  33. Why Not CDuce? by Thoran · · Score: 1

    And there is another language that is, IMHO, far more interesting than xslt. It is called CDuce.

    It is a strongly typed language (xslt is not). And this add a lot of robustness.

    Moreover, it has a real syntax (close to ML's one)

    It is still beta, though.

  34. 1.<plus 1/><is 2/> by giel · · Score: 1

    The samples below come from the Waterland website. ConsiceXML violates XML specifications the same way HTML does.
    doc/fast_intro.html

    • 5.<is 5/>
    • object.<get key lookup=false if_missing='return' default=false/>
    • <if> cond1 action1 cond2 <do> action2a action2b 'continue' </> otherwise action3 </if>

    Furthermore I do not understand the way they seem to mix values in text and tags. I mean

    5.<plus 7/>.<divided_by 3/>
    simply scares the hell out of me. I mean
    <int value="(5+7)/3"/>
    or
    <math divide_by="3"><math add="7">5</math></math>
    would be acceptable. These would readable or exploit the structure of XML. I do not want to offend anyone by any means, but what on earth are these Water(TM) people think they are doing?

    I like C. I like Java. I like C++, LISP, Perl, Prolog and Python. I even like .BAT (4dos), sh, HTML and XML. I even can see the use of Visual Basic, but why would anyone want to use XML to write code? To optimize it using XSLT? Or only to <BUZZ>blah</BUZZ>? This is not a language. This is slang. Being fluent in it characterizes savages.

    --
    giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts