Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
That's not a bug, that's a feature.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
So apparently Microsoft tried to make their own "D" long ago and failed. It's not talking about the current D from Digital Mars. The article had me confused for a few minutes there.
From thecoffeedesk.com:
.net language (goodbye true native code), and from what Microsoft said, M is to strive to be cross-platformâ¦. with a catch.
.net compilable language (it just kinda disappeared) had many flaws and never really caught on although some were enthusiastic about it (just like Bill Gates said we would write code for OS/2 for the next 10 years after its release).
.net would only really make it attractive to Windows-specific applications, although its integration with ASP.net is unclear at this point. The mono project does a descent job of allowing .net code to run on non-windows platforms, and if M adheres to the same standards then after a given time M-written applications will be penguin-friendly as well if Microsoft can get around the MS SQL dependency.
In a software-centric world where we already have many, many languages to program in, from scripting to bytecode compiled languages, to frameworks on top of languages and embedded languages, now Redmond wants to bring ANOTHER language to the table, titled âMâ(TM) (for Microsoft?).
The new language is to be a part of Microsoftâ(TM)s new Oslo development and service-oriented strategy, incorporating features from XAML while being textual and domain-specific. M is to be used directly with 2 other components to be released with M along with Visual Studio 2010: Quadrant, a tool for building models visually, and a repository for storing and viewing models in an SQL database.
Microsoft has not said much other than that about the new language, but it will presumably be a compiled
By âoecross platformâ, Microsoft means, âoecross platform as long the other platform authors write a backend for the code, and the SQL database MUST be hosted on MS SQL, a proprietary Microsoft Windows serviceâ. It makes perfect sense for being cross platform, if you are Microsoft and trying to purchase many copies of Windows (therefore generating revenue, and presumably the version is Vista or win2k8 since XP is out).
Another source says the language is actually their âDâ(TM) language, only revamped to fit into their new Oslo modeling strategy and renamed to a further letter down the alphabet to attract new interest in an old product. While this may be mostly true, D, which was never really promoted as a
The fundamentals and principals of the language are attractive, especially for OOP, but its ties to MS SQL and
Time will only tell how many will actually use the language outright before Microsoft finds a way to force programmers to use it, most likely by dropping support for some features in all languages except M to promote its usage. For now it appears that the only âoenon-visualâ C/C++ code encouraged for usage with Windows by Microsoft is in fact Windows itself, given the fact that Microsoftâ(TM)s programmers are on Microsoftâ(TM)s payroll. But if all newbie programmers learn these new languages, who will manage the billions of lines of C and C++ we currently use in the future, unless it is implied to be completely be rewritten? Iâ(TM)m sure the folks from the original Bell labs team would be interested in the answer to these questions as well.
Gotta love the slashdot effect.
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
From TFA:
By âoecross platformâ, Microsoft means, âoecross platform as long the other platform authors write a backend for the code, and the SQL database MUST be hosted on MS SQL, a proprietary Microsoft Windows serviceâ.
Let me clarify that statement. By cross platform we mean that this is portable to both Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Vista.
TFA was low on info and high on bias. The Register article is a little better. I couldn't quickly find any Microsoft release on the matter:
The Register
The Mumps Language was re-designated as the M language a number of
years ago. While Mumps isn't as widely used as some others, perhaps
the people in Redmond should do a literature search before they
name things.
see:
http://math-cs.cns.uni.edu/~okane/mumps.html
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane/
Kevin O'Kane http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane/
I think the article is talking about a different D programming language, not the one from Digital Mars.
Nope. The next languages will be "E", "R", "D" and back to "E" again.
Thanks for the link, that was a much better article. But most Slashdotters will prefer the less informative, more biased original chosen for featuring here. In fact, you can find way better articles just googling "programming language m oslo quadrant" than the blog post featured here. But his blog does have a neat look.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
And it's been taken since 1984.
...but we're still not sure about Vista.
But their revenue is still increasing, and they still have a stranglehold on the majority of the market.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...for decades. It has been an official alternate name for MUMPS, ANSI standard X11.1, since 1995, while MUMPS itself goes back to 1966. It has been available for virtually every important platform, including but certainly not limited to Windows, for decades. I believe it is still the programming language used by the Veterans Administration. It is the foundation of Intersystem's corporations Cache development platform, and a (much-modified) form of it underlies the product line of Medical Information Technology (Meditech).
Meditech's revenues are something in the range of $350 million, Intersystems' were about $140 million in 2003. That ain't Microsoft but that ain't hay, either.
Regardless of what the legal rights and wrongs might be--I'm not sure whether the ISO and ANSI standards are still current--it just arrogant and tacky and lame for Microsoft to have appropriated this well-established, decades-old language name, particularly when they're so pugnacious about defending their own rights to an ordinary English plural noun.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
And not just Windows XP Vista - all three versions of XP and all eight versions of Windows Vista! Truly the broadest, deepest multiplatform support of any programming language available!
Why not clean up the fucking dotnet framework reference dlls?
You can download them here.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Oslo and M appear to be taking a page out of the research Charles Simonyi has been doing at Microsoft, before leading to develop and advanced form of the technology at his own company Intentional Software.
The basic idea here is that any bigger project can be made more maintainable and flexible at the same time, if the deveopers create a domain specific model for the given task, and let the end-users (for example accountants, drug store chemists, biologists, business owners) model the concrete behaviour of the application by manipulating that simplified and specialized language, often visually, the way an UML diagram or a spreadsheet works.
Unfortunately the linked article offers a little more than the usual "LOL, Microsoft sucks!" rant, which is somewhat expected from a blog where the iMac keyboard and iPhone are used as "design elements".
Anyway, I'd say this should be watched as it can mean model languages will finally enter mainstream, something that's been years in the making.
Related articles:
http://blogs.msdn.com/wenlong/archive/2008/09/07/net-4-0-wf-wcf-and-oslo.aspx
"By mentioning model-driven programming, you will see a general modeling platform to be unveiled at PDC: Oslo. As Doug said, Oslo contains three simple things: a visual tool helps building models, a new textual DSL language helps defining models, and a relational repository that stores models. XAML represented workflows and services are special models in this domain. Check for more details in the postings from Doug and Don."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1430
"'Schemas in the repository can be defined using this language, but they dont have to be,' Chappell said. Developers can still use any other tools with which theyd be comfortable to create schemas instead. Because the new language will generate SQL, and the repository can be accessed using standard SQL, no special languages will be required."
HEY. Don't leave IA64 out :(
Your evaluation period for Productivity 1.0 has ended. Please purchase more coffee to continue using this product.
ok probably MS is not dying but I do think you are trolling here: .NET and C# probably you are right,
MS Ofiice not so much, mostly bad press for the ribbon thing
Vista, could you say how is gaining acceptance, again MS allowed OEMs to preinstall XP
IE7, you must be joking, the most stupid interface I have ever seen and speed - not so much
Windows CE has recently been surpassed in market share by RIM - which is probably right because it mostly sucks as a phone OS anyways
"...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..."
At one time Sybase and SQL Server used to be compatible. I would use MS SQL Server ODBC drivers to connect to Sybase running on *nix systems. I would also use the open source TDS software from http://www.freetds.org/ software to allow *nix machines to pull data from SQL Server running on Windows machines. Granted MS and Sybase seem to have forked the TDS protocol which both databases use.