Microsoft's New Programming Language, "M"

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."

Comments

Re:lame

[__aamnbm3774]

which parts need cleaned up?
they are all pretty consistent across the board.

and who cares how many languages there are. each one fits a different purpose, whether they are small niches or big sweeping frameworks like Java, does it really bother you that someone, somewhere just went 'yes, this is perfect for me'?

Re:lame

[Spiked_Three]

There was a lot of new tech in the last couple of .net releases - and unfortunately they are all not in sync at all.

It's no big deal, anytime that much new comes out in so many areas it takes a while to get them synced, but it's a little chaotic now.

Specifically; new GUI paradigm (XAML/WPF/Silverlight) and new Data Access (LINQ) - the standard collections don't have INotifyPropertyChange support across the board, SortedCollections are hit and miss, just in general I have found that interfaces needed for one new component is not well implemented for other new components. Like I said, just a bit of growing pains, but it needs attention.

But I'll agree it has nothing to do with a new language being introduced. I doubt if that will have any affect one way or the other.

Re:lame

[HangingChad]

Yeah--because they are probably wrong.

They are wrong. The last thing we need is another programming language tied to a specific platform.

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...

Exactly why we opted out of the whole Microsoft environment, at least on the server and desktop side of the house. We have a couple Windows clients floating around with the sales staff but those are laptops that came with it.

Instead of constantly serving the MS machine, we can focus on working. If we need capacity, we just stand it up. New servers go in for the cost of the hardware. I don't consider myself stubborn, just practical. I'd rather focus on work than spend time keeping up the MS all-singing, all-dancing, constantly changing development environment. All the time you spend keeping up on security patches, learning new languages, hunting through the knowledge base, re-writing stuff the new framework broke...it's just nuts. You'd be amazed how productive you can be when you strip all the MS process out of your environment.