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Microsoft's New Programming Language, "M"

Posted by timothy on from the well-it-sounds-delicious dept.

Anthony_Cargile writes "Microsoft announced Friday their new 'M' language, designed especially for building textual domain-specific languages and software models with XAML. Microsoft will also announce Quadrant, for building and viewing models visually, and a repository for storing and combining models using a SQL Server database. While some say the language is simply their 'D' language renamed to a further letter down the alphabet, the language is criticized for lack of a promised cross-platform function because of its ties to MS SQL server, which only runs on Windows."

21 of 334 comments (clear)

  1. lame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    great. another language to learn that is completely useless and no one will use.. And I'm not trolling, this glut of languages is fucking ridiculous. Why not clean up the fucking dotnet framework reference dlls?

    1. Re:lame by encoderer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are trolling. If you weren't you'd have no need to try to disclaim it.

      There's no such thing as too many languages.

      From a programmers perspective the more the market fragments the more opportunity for specialized knowledge that increases your market value.

      And it seems you don't really understand the idea of M. This is not a general purpose language.

      So your post is like saying "iPod? Great. Another computer to buy that is useless and no one will use. This glut of computers is fucking ridiculous. Why not make x86 boot quickly instead?"

      The iPod is a specialized computer for a specialized task. Just like M.

    2. Re:lame by darkpixel2k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      does it really bother you that someone, somewhere just went 'yes, this is perfect for me'?

      Yeah--because they are probably wrong.
      My company gets all the Microsoft development tools for free.

      With those tools, we build things like Contact management systems, inventory applications, and websites.

      We then turn around and sell them to customers. Customers love the price, but then later realize that they must buy a server to run in on, a copy of Windows, a server to run SQL on, a copy of Microsoft SQL Server, licenses, licenses to allow 'anonymous' internet connections, copies of Microsoft Office 2007 to be able to read the reports it spits out in Word 2007 format, etc...

      ...and the price balloons by thousands of dollars.

      When I develop applications, I don't go looking for the tools that make my life the easiest--I go looking for the tools that will make the end-user's life easier. I develop in languages that work across multiple platforms (except for the abomination that is Java).

      Microsoft tools are awesome if you're a developer. They make pumping out applications and websites easy...unless you want to use non-microsoft technologies...or want to save money...or have one of those stubborn Mac users that won't switch to windows ;)

      In other words, if you want to be locked into using and paying extortionate fees for Microsoft technologies until the end of time, go ahead. Use Visual Studio. Otherwise, look elsewhere.

      --
      There's no place like ::1 (I've completed my transition to IPv6)
    3. Re:lame by darkpixel2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The iPod is a specialized computer for a specialized task. Just like M.

      Yeah.
      M helps you reach your goal of being completely locking in your company to Microsoft products.
      The iPod just plays music.

      --
      There's no place like ::1 (I've completed my transition to IPv6)
    4. Re:lame by darkpixel2k · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, your doing real justice with your customer's. This is another M$ proprietary thing. And then you have the gall to mention Unix.

      What you just said made absolutely no sense...
      On top of that, nowhere did I say 'Unix', 'Linux' or anything remotely like it.

      Are you on drugs, or just a moron?

      --
      There's no place like ::1 (I've completed my transition to IPv6)
    5. Re:lame by CodeBuster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      we STILL do not have generics for reflection

      I use generics and reflection together all of the time, what do you mean that we don't have generics for reflection? The Activator class includes generics support for CreateInstance and there is a MakeGenericType method for making generic types among other things. Could it be better? I don't know maybe possibly, it depends upon what you want and how you define better in context. As for data-tables who actually uses raw data-tables straight up in a serious production application? If you need data persistence then get yourself an ORM like NHibernate or else use LINQ to SQL if you need something quick and dirty.

    6. Re:lame by gbjbaanb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Putting the end user first is an admirable but misplaced sentiment.

      The customer is always right. They pay your salary.

      You can continue to put yourself first, but you may find your more customer-focussed competitors do rather better than you.

      PS. most business apps are still MS-based, and Java is an increasingly irrelevent tech on Windows. MS is making sure of that by pulling developers to .Net as fast as they can.

    7. Re:lame by db32 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ok...lets examine this for a moment because I keep hearing this and it is patently stupid. I am ok with a good selection of languages for a variety of tasks, but "who cares how many languages" is stupid.

      Lets fast forward a bit more. Now we have a huge variety of redundanat languages in use. Now we have two major problems.

      1. Finding a job gets very very difficult. I already have seen jobs asking for 10 years experience in things that haven't been around for 10 years. Adding an alphabet soup worth of programming languagse is sure going to make that tech sector job hunt better... Oh, well...all our code was made by the last guy who called himself a programmer and he used this bizarre alphabet soup of redundant proprietary languages, so we need experience in that.
      2. Finding an employee gets very very difficult. Well congratulations...you are stuck with a bunch of projects written in obscure proprietary garbage languages...now you have to find someone who can maintain that after you let yourself be coded into a corner by your last programmer. Talk about an excellent morale builder "Hello, welcome to company X, we either need you to learn these obscure languages to maintain this ductape and paperclip code, or you need to port everything that was done by the person that talked us into the latest and greatest alphabet soup language that turned out to be crap but we didn't know better because we aren't programmers."

      Ugh...I have watched this crap happen way too many times in the field to listen to that "a new language for every purpose" crap. I don't expect everything to be coded in one language, and some languages are indeed better in certain regards...but to constantly invent new languages is bullshit. Especially when we are dealing with companies like Microsoft who's primary interest isnt building a better tool to get the job done, but building a better tool to enforce vendor lock in.

      --
      The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
  2. That sound that you hear... by zappepcs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is the sound of a company dieing ... seriously. Yes, there will be those that call this post a troll, but look at the facts. What new product has MS announced that was not met with criticism and derision? What have they done in the last 5 years that improved the personal computing world? World leaders they no longer are. The MS way of doing things is no longer the ONLY way to do things.

    The more they try to launch products which are locked into their own ecosystem, the more people laugh. There are entire countries that have rejected MS products, never mind the users who do so on their own. When entire countries and industries reject your products you have a serious problem. MS has not and is not addressing that problem. They seem to be blindly going down the same road that led to this situation without concern for how they will make money in the next decade.

    It amounts to basically a rotting corpse on the sidewalk with a beggars cup held out. That is just my opinion, and it stems from the lack of anything good or beneficial coming from MS. YMMV

    --
    Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
    1. Re:That sound that you hear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, to be fair, a lot of organizations and governments that have "rejected" Microsoft products did so only to win a better deal. Some have managed to go with Linux or some other OS, but most have ended up back in Microsoft's hands (albeit with a substantial discount.)

      Ha ... captcha is "pathetic."

    2. Re:That sound that you hear... by mindstormpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      is the sound of a company dieing ... seriously. Yes, there will be those that call this post a troll, but look at the facts. What new product has MS announced that was not met with criticism and derision? What have they done in the last 5 years that improved the personal computing world?

      Windows Home Server actually received pretty good reviews, and it can be considered an improvement (mainly in the ease of use) on the current (non-geek) home server scene - the non-existing one that is. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I'm looking forward to it (and no, I'm not a fanboy, I actually run 3 servers at home: windows, linux and freebsd).

      Then there's Microsoft Research, which actually comes up with some great stuff, though most of it is not (yet) implementable on a commercial scale.

      So I'll call your post a troll. That's just my opinion too.

    3. Re:That sound that you hear... by LingNoi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As soon as I read "windows home server" my first thought was all the bad press about the file corruption problems and tbh that's one of the worse things that could happen, to loose all your family photos.

    4. Re:That sound that you hear... by pieisgood · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't know about you, but I would consider the Xbox 360 a rather large success for Microsoft. The 360 game pad? Best, in my opinion, on any system. Windows XP? Seems to be doing fairly well from my perspective. Adobe creating new products that give Windows an advantage over OSX because of hardware compatibility and support? That seems to be good for Microsoft. Certainly, Microsoft isn't doing them selves any favors, not until windows 7 is released with actual improvements. But, Software developers are developing for windows and continuing to keep Microsoft in a comfortable zone of Operating system dominance. TL;DR Microsoft isn't going anywhere.

      --
      Eat sleep die
    5. Re:That sound that you hear... by Malevolyn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hell their are still trolls that tout Vista as a failure even though it has 10 times the market share of OS.X and a 100 times the market share of desktop linux and makes them BILLIONS.

      Market share != quality.

      --
      Your ad here.
    6. Re:That sound that you hear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful
      • SharePoint: never heard anything good about it, and no shop I've ever worked for has touched it
      • PerformancePoint: literally never heard of it before now
      • SQL Server 2008: ok, that's actually comparable to rivals, because everyone else's standards support is equally lousy
      • Visual Studio 2008: so amazing that every Microsoft dev I met uses gvim by preference
      • Windows Server 2008: who cares? the compelling Longhorn features were all dropped!
      • Xbox 360: when your quality problems reach the mainstream media, you've really screwed up
      • Threat Management Gateway, Live Mesh: we don't know yet whether these are going to suck, and they certainly aren't making BILLIONS when they aren't out yet
    7. Re:That sound that you hear... by BhaKi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The .NET Framework is the easiest way of developing things for Windows. (Read: The .NET Framework is the most lucrative trap)

      --
      The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
    8. Re:That sound that you hear... by willyhill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Seems to me that whatever Microsoft introduces or announces is met with criticism and derision simply because people are predisposed to do that, especially around here.

      I seem to remember C# and the .NET framework were met with criticism and derision eight years ago (I'm not a developer but I've followed the dev space for years because my job used to involve dealing with those technologies anyway). Not much criticism and derision now, is there?

      More to the point, where exactly is all this criticism and derision coming from? Microsoft has a *huge* developer base that doesn't exactly hang around Slashdot and Digg. Are you sure all this negativity is not just the feedback loop many people around here are stuck in? I try to get my tech news from many places, with Slashdot being just one of them. The usual negative tends to temper the usual hyped positive of other venues.

      As someone who runs data centers, I was very excited about Server 2008, which was criticized even before it was released here and elsewhere. And it was hyped by the Microsoft-friendly tech rags. In the end, I had to actually use it to make up my mind. If I went by what Slashdot or C|Net tell me about technology, I'd still be using an abacus.

      You can use as many florid phrases as you like, but most people outside your own circle of friends view Microsoft as just another tech company from which to buy products (or in some cases avoid them). And hardly one that is dying (unless you're twitter, of course).

      --
      The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
    9. Re:That sound that you hear... by westlake · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Market share != quality.
      .

      Market share = survival.

      Microsoft's bread & butter is the home and office workhorse.

      The Windows PC that can run damn near every client-side app on the planet - including the marquee products of free and open source.

      For the server room there is Exchange and SharePoint and...pretty much everything else you might need or want for a small to mid-sized business.

    10. Re:That sound that you hear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That wasn't really possible before. Previously, they had to take what MS offered, or suffer. Now, they actually have a choice to fall back on if their bluff does not work. That security was not there before.

  3. Re:Story Mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Karma whore.

  4. Re:Domain modeling environments by Stan+Vassilev · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They're probably doomed. It's very very hard to make a visual programming language not suck (the closest I ever got involved having large gobs of text inside the visual blobs, which isn't very visual!) because handling scaling of complexity is hard visually.

    You're missing the point: the visual components isn't a generic purpose programming language. It's a domain specific language tailored to a specific task.

    Whether it's visual, or it's just a bunch of XML markup is up the implementers. Sometimes some paradigms are much simpler to present visually, and then visual editing can be used.

    Think of it that way: the DSL and the models they represent don't explain *how* things work, but *what* the major agents in a system are there and their interaction.

    They are evolved metadata, an evolved "settings" file, that lets you set more things in the system than normally you're able to.