New NSA-Funded Code Rolls All Programming Languages Into One

An anonymous reader writes "What's your favorite programming language? Is it CSS? Is it JavaScript? Is it PHP, HTML5, or something else? Why choose? A new programming language developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University is all of those and more — one of the world's first "polyglot" programming languages. Sound cool? It is, except its development is partially funded by the National Security Agency, so let's look at it with a skeptical eye. It's called Wyvern — named after a mythical dragon-like thing that only has two legs instead of four — and it's supposed to help programmers design apps and websites without having to rely on a whole bunch of different stylesheets and different amalgamations spread across different files.

Comments

Wyvern = Wyrm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? What's the worst that could happen? What's the best?

Why is the NSA interested in something like that directly? What is the potential for abuse?

Is it to make code analysis that much more centralized and (supposedly) simple?

Why didn't this come up with itself before now?

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The standard NSA tatctic for introducing security holes into a system is to obfuscate things so that holes are hard to spot and find. SELinux is probably such a system, and this polglot language -- which effectviely makes debugging impossible -- is likely another.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[Bite The Pillow]

Why?

To write applications in one language, instead of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and something else. Not including multiple levels of configuration files (website and web server at least).

What's the worst that could happen?

The NSA could insert backdoors which, unless they were incomprehensible crypto, would be easily found by both white and black hat investigators. Also, Carnegie Mellon University, which has a pile of research announcements every year, has its entire research department under suspicion of colluding with an oppressive government agency and spends decades regaining international status as someone you can do anything other than make the punchline of a joke.

CMU losing status is, to CMU, absolutely an intolerable option. I'm not saying it won't just because of the potential impact, but you asked what is the worst that could happen. Backdoors, and a respected university bursts into flames and is disregarded for decades internationally. That's bad.

What's the best?

Fewer bugs.

Why is the NSA interested in something like that directly?

Because despite recent bad press, they are interested in security. If we can write stuff with fewer bugs, we are more secure. Maybe there are still plenty of bugs in the hardware/OS that they know about, but fewer bugs in the application level, which means the foreigners don't know about them because they don't exist.

What is the potential for abuse?

Pretty small. White hats will vet the libraries, black hats will try to penetrate it, and it's no more or less secure than anything else a human has written. But people can make mistakes in fewer languages. And they aren't replacing languages, from the sound of it.

Is it to make code analysis that much more centralized and (supposedly) simple?

I suppose you could read the article.

Why didn't this come up with itself before now?

Why didn't the airplane come up before it did? Are you insinuating something? Do you know something we don't know? Did someone mod you up for any particular reason, or just because you spewed thoughtless rhetorical questions?

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[TheMCP]

It *has* been done before. I worked on it years ago. One of my colleagues came up with it in 1999.

http://www.waterlanguage.org/

It was brilliant to work in, but it didn't catch on.

Re: Wyvern = Wyrm

[Anonymous Coward]

Not impressed. The OP obviously doesn't understand a thing about programming languages in general, or programming as an activity in particcular. Or he would know that the use of multiple files, and multiple languages, is a means to an end, not a nuisance. Namely to manage complexity, and to use the most appropriate level of abstraction to solve a particular problem. If he'd know he would not claim that wyvern is a polyglot language, but that it is a meta language to create internal DSLs, domain specific languages. So if anything it is a tool to create new languages, as oppose to to eliminate existing ones as by his claim. Poor sod

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[Anonymous Coward]

backdoors [...] would be easily found by both white and black hat investigators.

That's about the same as stating it is as simple to find a needle in a haystack as to put one in.

We already have issues finding normal bugs. We have seen flaws in kernels and encryption libraries that might have well been a typo, yet were in for years.

Re: Wyvern = Wyrm

[mwvdlee]

Except that it's not valid XML but something even worse.
That language just looks horrible.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[jythie]

If nothing else, people need to remember that the NSA is a big organization with lots of departments in it with different sets of priorities.

As for why someone did not come up with it before, I have not looked lately, but old versions of GCC could compile together half a dozen languages into a single binary and I worked on a team that split up the project into multiple languages using the feature.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[digitig]

Why didn't this come up with itself before now?

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Re: Wyvern = Wyrm

[BlackHeron717]

I agree with most of your comment, but I am not sure how this makes debugging impossible, please elaborate.

Re: Wyvern = Wyrm

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

To properly need to debug such a language, you would need to be aware of all of the possible rules, pitfalls, bugs, and race conditions of every language under its hood.

At a basic level, is your "if else" condition running on it's Java or C++ or C version? Does it catch exceptions? Where is data being handled in memory? Are buffer overruns possible in some of these languages?

No one human could possibly we simultaneously cognisant of all possible sources of error. Programs in such a language would be a security disaster waiting to happen.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[Skarjak]

Yup, the NSA is insane or stupid if they think people will trust this.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[hawkinspeter]

Set the haystack on fire - the needle won't burn and will be left in the ashes.

Put the haystack into a body of water and the hay will mostly float whereas the needle will sink.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[hawkinspeter]

Also, you can use a metal detector. Or some kind of x-ray machine.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[omfgnosis]

No, how do they work?

Re: Wyvern = Wyrm

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. We've been striving to improve language interoperability for a long time. First we had the language binders like SWIG, then we had p-code in .Net. These both do a good job of it but SWIG always felt clunky and .Net wouldn't allowing mixing source files in a single project without clever reconfiguration and symbol munging madness. If a tool comes along that allows me to put a .cpp file next to a .py file and then see the c symbols from Python...I'll be very happy with that. That means we can now port selectively with far less overhead and use the best language for the job without compromising other aspects of the code or making the MAKEFILE look like a spaghetti nightmare monster.

As with all things you'll be able to use this language to build some truly horrendous blobs of amorphous goop but that's been true of all languages since the get go. A language is a tool, you can use it badly no matter how pure and perfect it is. If you start drilling holes all over everything then something bad is going to happen no matter how good the brand of hammer drill.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[cthulhu11]

CMU losing status is, to CMU, absolutely an intolerable option.

Some argue that happened years ago when the hypen was removed and the logo buggered.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[Gob Gob]

Because despite recent bad press, they are interested in security. If we can write stuff with fewer bugs, we are more secure.

I'm confused, if things that make things more secure for "us" don't they make them more secure for "them"? Isn't that why some technologies like encryption are not allowed to be exported to certain corners of the Internet?

If a government agency wants to insert itself into such a project - Cui bono? Its more like an action to stir the pot than to bring about conclusion. They only have power if there is an enemy so winning the war is not an option.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[lucien86]

...We have seen flaws in kernels and encryption libraries that might have well been a typo, yet were in for years.

A new language that either doesn't allow such bugs or has a method for universally finding them would be the Holy Grail of programming.
Unfortunately like the Holy Grail it is likely not to exist and instead lead us all on endless never-ending quests that eat up our whole lives...

I have long been on my own quest for another holy grail - Strong AI - but I am sure it exists. It has the same but opposite problems to the idea of a universal language - the core is an in...- well I mustn't tell anyone, they might be after the same grail too after all. :D

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[frank_adrian314159]

Yes. A company I worked with tried an blah-XL based language, too. The thing was a nightmare. If you didn't have a decent editor handy, you were up shit creek. Simple to poorly indent, leading to misunderstanding in scope and structure, while simultaneously being syntactically bulky and hard to read, XML a great notation to hate.

Whatever your language was, if it had anything at all to do with XML syntactically (other than throwing its syntax away), it's probably an example of this: A programmer had the problem of designing a data representation. He chose XML and now he has two problems.

Re:Wyvern = Wyrm

[andrzej.w.lipski]

Sounds like a classic get smart program name. A secret project that reveals exactly what the project intends to do. Is this where we are?

Lack of basic research

[Taco Cowboy]

I arrived at America pretty late - at the 60's - but at least at that time America had several institutions doing all kinds of wonderful basic research

Bell Labs
Xerox's famous lab at Palo Alto
The Skunkworks

And at that time Darpa funded a lot of basic research as well

Today, all gone

Even Darpa's funding are not aiming at basic research - such as what TFA has outlined - what they are doing at Carnegie Mellon is actually an applied research ... taking what has been known and add another layer onto it

What's happening in America nowadays is very worrying

Re:Lack of basic research

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Of course, a lot of research was done by the private labs of corporations back then, like IBM, RCA, etc.. Engineering was a respected profession, you needed real talent to become an engineer or programmer and you could earn a good living that way in the West.

Then one day some bright psychopath realized it would be cheaper if universities did the research with government money instead.

Then you get the research done, your future employees come already in debt, and then they work for peanuts paying back their student loans.

So companies used to pay YOU to do research, now YOU pay to go to university and the companies get to keep the IP!

And social engineering and manipulation means that people will WILLINGLY do so!

Brilliant!

Re:Lack of basic research

[Anonymous Coward]

The breakup of the Bell Telephone system (Bell Labs), the elimination of the monopoly on photocopying (Xerox), and any reduction in defense spending (The Skunkworks) aren't among the things that should worry you.

Way to miss the point. It doesn't matter who funds these things, what matters is that they're getting done. The fact that Bell or Xerox was a monopoly does not undermine the merit of their research work.

They made the first transistors at Bell Labs, for fuck's sake! Xerox PARC paved the way for the modern GUI!

If the "good guys" aren't there to put up the cash to move society forward, what good are they? Would you have us all stand still?

Re:Lack of basic research

[khallow]

Today, all gone

Yet at the same time, the US spends considerably more on research than it did then. I think here the explanation is that public funding crowded out private for basic research.

It makes little sense to fund your own research in the cases where some government would fund it for you. Similarly, if you're a researcher, public funding is high quality and less demanding than private funding. Sure, you have to fill out a ton of paperwork. But they don't have the anything like the expectations that most private funders would have.

Re:Lack of basic research

[thetoastman]

Sigh, Commander Taco, I'm not sure how familiar you are with basic research.

I'm not familiar with basic research in the computer sciences (although I enjoy reading the papers), but I am familiar with basic research in chemistry.

Unless you've had a sudden, brilliant insight, all research is painstakingly build on someone else's work. In fact, as a grad student you're often asked to write a review article in your area of research before you begin actual research. This gets you familiar with the lay of the land (knowledge), the direction of the field, and some of the major players in your chosen area of research. Plus, you and your research adviser might get a publication out of it.

I took a look at some of the topics mentioned on Wyvern's home page. A couple of them caught my eyes:

• Safely Composable Type-Specific Languages. Cyrus Omar, Darya Kurilova, Ligia Nistor, Benjamin Chung, Alex Potanin, and Jonathan Aldrich. Proc. European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, 2014.
• Language-Based Architectural Control. Jonathan Aldrich, Cyrus Omar, Alex Potanin, and Du Li. In International Workshop on Aliasing, Capabilities, and Ownership (IWACO '14), 2014.
• Type-Directed, Whitespace-Delimited Parsing for Embedded DSLs. Cyrus Omar, Benjamin Chung, Darya Kurilova, Alex Potanin, and Jonathan Aldrich. In Globalization of Domain Specific Languages (GlobalDSL), 2013.

I don't know enough about the research space to know if these topics are derivative, progressive, or ground-breaking. I like the ideas that seem to be embedded in the titles, and the focus on creating safer languages / systems from an architectural point rather than brutally enforced by a compiler (see ADA).

I work in the space of HTML / CSS / Javascript / Java / SQL / Map-Reduce / Linux. It's a mess, with security, performance, reliability issues both at the boundaries and within the various containers. Something that makes life a little better in that space should be a good thing. As it is, I see front end developers not understanding back end constraints, data source developers delivering data in not-usable blobs, system admins without the necessary background to troubleshoot platform performance issues.

As a systems architect, I try to herd everything in one general direction, but to the specialists my statements can sound restrictive, demanding, and somewhat arbitrary (they're usually none of the above). If we had a common architecture / language, we might be able to converge on a better, safer application in less time, with less friction.

Don't talk to me about UML. I like it, but I don't know many who do or use it much past the design phase (if that).

In short, it looks interesting and ambitious. I'll be interested in seeing how far this gets.

--- end Sunday night rant

Re:Lack of basic research

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, Federal R&D spending has not declined strongly, or not at all for that matter in both total amounts as well as inflation-adjusted amounts. At worst it has been flat. But why is that? I assume that you don't really understand how the Federal budget process works, do you? The President submits his budget, the Senate praises it for strengthening our commitment to the future, and the House eviscerates the President as a communist/muslim who wastes money on pseudo-science issues like climate change and "green" energy. What follows is a lot of grandstanding and name calling whereby the two chambers, who incidentally are the ones who are supposed to actually pass funding bills, don't do shit and end up passing continuing resolutions for all bills (except the one that has to do with funding Congress) that keeps funding essentially flat for another year. Then certain people who seem to outsource their critical thinking skills to one or two talking heads on the radio or TV for political analysis find a way to blame the President for not doing Congress's job as mandated in the Constitution.

Re:Lack of basic research

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet at the same time, the US spends considerably more on research than it did then.

Right. The NASA budget would disagree on that point. You should realize that today's R&D includes things like computer software - most of it has nothing to do with research. If you disagree, you might as well say building a bridge is research.

Pharmaceutical spend more on adverts in US than on research, and their research are clinical trials not basic research.

Research at Universities is cut away. Tenured positions are evaporating quicker than water in California aquifers. The wheels are spinning, but the hamster's dead. That's the status of primary research in the US or Canada.

Re:Lack of basic research

[disposable60]

Since then, federal R&D spending has been declining strongly, thanks to the policies of our oh-so-science-friendly *administration*.

I think you misspelled *legislature*.

Re:Lack of basic research

[silfen]

I suggest you have a look at the US budget process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

The president pays lip service to science, but in the end, he obviously cares about other programs more, like handouts to his buddies in industry through "stimulus packages" and "bailouts" and all that crap.

Re:Lack of basic research

[khallow]

The NASA budget would disagree on that point.

Ignoring that NASA just doesn't do and never has done that much actual research then or now, we still have that NASA is burning lots of money on the space/Earth science category now while it was burning lots of money on national prestige projects in the 60s and 70s.

The NSF and NIH spend lots of money on basic research too. It gets squandered, but the money is there.

Pharmaceutical spend more on adverts in US than on research, and their research are clinical trials not basic research.

Thank the FDA for keeping you safe and destroying yet another source of research funding.

Research at Universities is cut away. Tenured positions are evaporating quicker than water in California aquifers. The wheels are spinning, but the hamster's dead. That's the status of primary research in the US or Canada.

I find it a bit paradoxical that you can complain about science funding by pointing to elimination of one of the bigger institutional obstacles to good research, academic tenure. For example, there's a huge destructive dynamic where an excess of scientists are trained (via excessive minting of new PhDs) in order to support a few extra tenure positions. Meanwhile the people who make the poor decisions which creates this dynamic are safely insulated from the consequences of their actions by tenure. They don't, for example, have to worry about their jobs being taken by the horde of hungry graduates.

My view is that the institutions and culture are deeply poisoned against useful scientific research. There is a huge disconnect between funding for this sort of thing and outcome. I think it all boils down to lack of accountability especially while spending other peoples' money.

And this avoidance of responsibility and accountability shows up in your reasoning. for example, your emphasis on "basic" and "primary research" or "tenure" rather than the alleged benefits of those things. It also shows up in the remarkably terrible expectations people have for research (such as NASA research projects, for a glaring example already mentioned).

My view on this is that current "basic" or "primary" research is worthless research. It is inherently and deliberately restricted to research that doesn't deliver value.

There are two things to note. First, good research is valuable in a human lifetime, often immediately. You don't have to wait three hundred years to see if there are going to be benefits from the work.

Note that I'm not advocating the next quarter thinking (which seems to be the common fallacy that people reach for when they hear my argument) that everyone claims businesses do or that research should turn a monetary profit. Scientists even can evaluate with decent success the relative value of their projects and when their resources are on the line, they make those decisions.

It's foolhardy to assume that merely going through the motions of research is going to result in actual research anymore than say building fake planes out of straw will bring in real planes. The process is not the outcome.

Second, the current approach just isn't working despite astounding levels of funding by all parties involved. My view is that with public funding from any source, there is at least one order of magnitude of waste built in over a potential private project. It's by its nature inherently monumentally inefficient. But they can spend well over an order of magnitude more than private sources.

This poisons the well for private research. Why should the private world build a $100 million particle accelerator when the governments of the world can slap a billion dollar one toget

Wyvern?

[lsllll]

I looked up images of Wyvern on Google images. Don't think it's a good choice. Reminds me of the NSA's overreach over our lives. I think they should have named it Pussy Cat.

Shit summary

[Anonymous Coward]

CSS and HTML5 are not programming languages. You don't "choose" html5 over, say, php.
(And don't fucking say HTML5 + CSS3 is turing complete)

Re:Shit summary

[Bing Tsher E]

I didn't see any programming languages in the list on the summary. Just a bunch of web shit.

Re:Shit summary

[binarylarry]

Yeah and can you imagine the horrific shit sandwich that would be a combination of CSS, HTML5, PHP and JavaScript?

666 Mark of the Techno Beast. It's like some shit Ghostbusters 2099 would be tasked with stopping.

Re:Shit summary

[Njorthbiatr]

Java?

Re:Shit summary

[Ksevio]

PHP and javascript are both fully functional programming languages even if both have flaws. CSS and HTML on the other hand are for web markup and display.

CSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's your favorite programming language? Is it CSS?"

Why yes, I just love writing VoIP systems in CSS.

Re:CSS?

[sillybilly]

Every time I see the wish to create yet another, newer, better way to program a computer, instead of the oldschool assembler, C, Basic and Pascal methods, it keeps reminding me to ask people to let's come up with a better way to represent numbers. As in Roman numerals like MCMLXXXIV truly suck compared to Hindu (called Arabic) 1984 numerals, but we shouldn't leave it at that, there's gotta be something better than that Hindu representation. But the reality is that we'd be like a dog chasing it's tail with a myriad of patentable yet equivalent or even worse ways to represent numbers, and in fact even if equivalent, the cost of getting used to the new was is by itself not worth it, without any tangible benefit. So whoever makes a living on inventing new numeral ways of representation, like those in the computer science business are trying to make a living from inventing run of the mill but no better than what we used to have, patentable languages, they are in the same situation. At least that's my 2 cents. We gotta keep evolving, we gotta keep up with the times, we gotta keep up with change. Oh yeah? How about some French numerals then, instead of Roman or Arabic ones, that are better. Or American numerals. Who can come up with a better way to do it? Huh? Huh?

Re:CSS?

[doublebackslash]

I'd like to point out that you can't represent irrational numbers accurately without a new system. Let alone trancendental numbers.

Also some numbering systems are more convenient. Binary, for example. Not different numerals, but used differently.

I know, not exactly your point, but don't dismiss languages other than C, Basic, and Pascal.

Re:CSS?

[david_thornley]

You can't represent most real numbers anyway with any notation. Any digital system has only countably many representations, and the number of reals is uncountable. Any analog system will have limits of measurement, and thus can be represented digitally.

Re:CSS?

[doublebackslash]

indeed! And extending the analogy even more even though we *could* write Graham's number in decimal the number of digits makes it impossible to physically realize, but we can represent it with up arrow notation with relative ease.

Granted, all of these mathematical facts don't map 1:1 back to the original debate but it does encourage thinking about programming languages not as meaningless novelties derived from one system but as a landscape of utility, each with their own merits or lack thereof.

Also +1 for citing the uncountable infinity of the reals. Learning the difference between aleph null and aleph 1 was a deeply satisfying experience for me.

Not programming languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to break it to you, but HTML5 and CSS are not programming languages.

Re:Not programming languages

[gweihir]

Indeed. And JavaScript and PHP are special-purpose languages that are unfit to be user in a general setting. The OP has no clue.

Re:Not programming languages

[gnupun]

But they are domain specific declarative programming languages. Not all programming languages are imperative or functional.

Re:Not programming languages

[gweihir]

Not quite, but it decidedly requires quite advanced skills to produces anything good with it.

Re:Not programming languages

[geminidomino]

Nah, he's right. When your skills get "sufficiently advanced" and your needs spread into the more esoteric corners of the house of horrors, you run into even more half-done, half-assed, all-broken aspects of the language.

To this day, I'm not quite sure what the point was in implementing an SSL API that has no way to check for certificate revocation (the whole point of certificate-based security)...

Re:Not programming languages

[gweihir]

That bad? Well, I believe you and I am glad I never invested significant time into PHP.

Incidentally, while revocation is the critical part of the whole certificate system (I learned that, oh, 25 years ago in a university lecture on "authentication systems", so it has been known to anybody that wanted to find out for at least 5 years longer), most people do not get that at all. You can routinely tell people apart into those that get what crypto can do and what it cannot and those that are clueless, merely by asking about certificate revocation. Incidentally, there still is no certificate revocation system that works, even after at least 30 years or so of research. The only thing that works to some degree is shipping revocation lists with browser updates. But that is neither a good solution, nor a general one.

Compiler virus

[penguinoid]

Wasn't there some discussion on how effective a special, compiler-embedded virus would be? This seems like a good candidate for that.

DARPA...

[__aaaipu5720]

Uh, and DARPA created the internet, so what?

NSA: A Source Name we trust!

[pubwvj]

Yes! Finally, a programming language and development system from a serious organization we can all trust to help us produce secure applications! I am so happy I'm doing the little Snoopy Dog House Dance! Oh-Joy! More Exclamation Points Please!!!

Re:NSA: A Source Name we trust!

[amjohns]

Yeah, like that horrible SELinux thing they developed...

Re:NSA: A Source Name we trust!

[ron_ivi]

Sad thing is that not even you know if you're being sarcastic or not.

You have n programming languages...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have n programming languages. You think "That's to many, let's invent a programming language that combines all of them!", and then do so. You now have n+1 programming languages...

Re:You have n programming languages...

[weilawei]

Apologies to you, AC, for hijacking your highly upvoted comment.

We appear to have something rather serious at work here. A registered user (jelIomizer, the second 'L' is actually an 'i' character or some Unicode variant) posted over 28 posts (all MyCleanPC spam) in under 6 minutes on this article--something neither you or I can do. This smacks of a slashcode bug or admin collusion.

For reference...

Oh yeah, hello to all the friendly NSA propaganda operatives out there. Go fuck yourself.

Re:You have n programming languages...

[BitZtream]

http://xkcd.com/927/

Re:You have n programming languages...

[silent-listener]

The remark on Github ' Wyvern requires the Java 8 JDK ' will give a new try to get a programming languages with the best of all previous or n+2. The old languages as C are not so bad, as they still try to copy it.

Ridiculous Summary, Interesting Papers

[Anonymous Coward]

As you'd expect from CMU, the papers themselves are pretty interesting. Just read the abstracts instead of trying to guess from the summary or vice article, which are both way off the mark.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/papers/ecoop14-tsls.pdf
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/papers/maspeghi13.pdf

Because More is always better !!!

[bug1]

At the NSA they KNOW a bigger haystack is a better haystack, so why not extend that idea to a programming language.

By understanding all the languages you get the strengths of all the languages and none of the weaknesses, programmers can just ignore the weaknesses then they arent there,

Why should programmers have to put up with those pesky syntax errors when you can just make the language accept any (stupid) command.

Forward to the future !

why- just why?

[sumdumass]

Why in the hell would you need to look at something with a skeptical eye just because money came from a certain source? Is the reputation of carnegie mellon suspect or something? And if so, shouldn't that in and of itself be the reason of suspect?

The submiter is a shallow person suffering from guilt by association which is never a valid premise. I mean i know skin heads who donate to planned patrenthood specifically because they have all their abortion clinics in areas with high minority populations and keep the minority populations in check. Does that mean we have to look at them wiyh a skeptical eye too? Of course not- or at least npt because a source of their funding has issues most of us find repulsive.

The merrits of this will rest on its own. There is absolutely no reason to put the integrity of the development into question simply because the NSA gave funding.

Re:why- just why?

[Desler]

Except it's not proprietary. It's GPLv2 and on Github.

Re:why- just why?

[Spinalcold]

You should always look at the funding path. It tells you a lot about the quality of research. In the past 60 years funding towards 'think tanks' has gone into making bad science to combat good science research, all in an effort to move political goals. I'm not saying this particular research is bad, however it is good to know some of the funding came from the NSA.

Re:why- just why?

[sumdumass]

If the NSA or evil software writers association actually developed the software, then yes. But simply passing money to an otherwise reputated team makes no sense- closed or open.

Re:why- just why?

[sumdumass]

No.. you are just as likely to overlook good research and settle for bad research when the source of funds is a primary role in how you accept it.

The research and or science will stand on its own merrits. Well, that is if science is the goal and not politics. In this case, a university of good repute just had its integrity challenged by nothing more than idiots on parade trying to turn something political. There is no justification for it. Just mentioning the funding sources is one thing, but they actually implied it meant something and that is wrong.

Re:why- just why?

[HiThere]

Except that one wonders *why* are they funding it. How will it make our communications less secure?

Off hand the only thing that comes to mind is that there would be fewer components of the browser that the NSA needed to compromise if all the languages used the same interpreter. Perhaps that's all there is. It's even possible that they didn't fund the project with a malign intent. That, however, is not the way I'd bet given their "improvements" of encryption methods.

Re:why- just why?

[TubeSteak]

There is absolutely no reason to put the integrity of the development into question simply because the NSA gave funding.

Uh yes, there is.

As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

How much longer are you willing to be a battered spouse, making excuses for your abuser?

Re:why- just why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at if those who funded the research will benefit from one particular conclusion over another.

Then you'll know.

AC

Re:why- just why?

[hubie]

They fund it because they fund all sorts of basic and applied research.

Re:why- just why?

[sumdumass]

The NSA never touched this though. You sem to be trying to say that since a drunken murderer buys jim beam that all whiskey jim beam produces is somehow now suspect. It juat aint so.

Re:why- just why?

[jeff4747]

Half of the NSA's budget is spying.
The other half of the NSA's budget is defending the US government from spying.

You shouldn't assume that all of the NSA's activities are in the first pool.

Re:why- just why?

[HiThere]

If you can't tell one hand from the other, why shouldn't you assume that it's the treacherous one? Vile acts can be MUCH more destructive than virtuous act can be constructive.

Re:why- just why?

[HiThere]

Yes. So MAYBE it's reasonable. But since it's selected for promotion by the NSA it's also reasonable to look for secondary effects. Remember, they not only acted to strengthen net encryption in a way that nobody understood for a decade, they also acted to weaken it in a way that nobody understood for a decade.

Re:why- just why?

[david_thornley]

The NSA didn't directly touch the RSA's code either. They just suggested (with a $10M incentive) certain values in an algorithm.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

... without having to rely on a whole bunch of different stylesheets and different amalgamations spread across different files

There's nothing I love more than editing each embedded style sheet in a tree and searching through monolithic source files with thousands of functions...

No, it doesn't "roll all languages into one"

[Animats]

No, it doesn't "roll all languages into one". It just allows embedding of the text of another language, such as HTML, into a Wyvern program. Variables can be substituted. Like this:

let webpage : HTML = <html><body><h1>Results for {keyword}</h1
<ul id="results">{to_list_items(query(db,
SELECT title, snippet FROM products WHERE {keyword} in title))}
</ul></body></html>

(except that the last 3 lines above should be indented, because this language uses Python-style block notation.)

Of course, everybody does that now, but the way they do it, especially in PHP, tends to lead to problems such as SQL injection attacks. The idea here is that Wyvern has modules for the inserted text which understand what kinds of quoting or escaping are required for the embedded language text.

I just glanced at the paper, but that seems to be the big new feature.

Re:No, it doesn't "roll all languages into one"

[FlyingGuy]

That problem would not exist if people new how to use a database.

Re:No, it doesn't "roll all languages into one"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just about quoting or escaping. It actually builds an AST for each TSL expression (for example, an HTML expression), so they can tell if the expression is valid and how to combine the Wyvern expression with the TSL expression containing it. It looks like brain-dead string concatenation, which reduces clutter and improves readability, but it gives you all the benefits of using the type system.

Re:No, it doesn't "roll all languages into one"

[countach]

yeah, and the Java experience is that embedding code with html isn't a great idea. That's why JSP is on the way out and JSF on the way in.

Re:No, it doesn't "roll all languages into one"

[Tablizer]

Why it's ColdFusion...done wrong!

skilled international negotiator!

[silfen]

"Wyvern is like a skilled international negotiator who can smoothly switch between languages to get a whole team of people to work together," Aldrich said. "Such a person can be extremely effective and, likewise, I think our new approach can have a big impact on building software systems."

Yeah, about as skilled and effective as past Israeli-Palestinian negotiators...

CSS? JavaScript? PHP? HTML5?

[tommeke100]

To write better Apps and Websites?
Are these what the kids call programming languages these days?
It doesn't sound very serious.

Re: CSS? JavaScript? PHP? HTML5?

[Beck_Neard]

> Are these what the kids call programming languages these days?

Yup. A lot of 'programmers' don't even know non-web languages exist. I wish I was kidding. And a lot of employers don't know either. The whole thing is just really sad.

Re: CSS? JavaScript? PHP? HTML5?

[houghi]

To write better Apps and Websites?
Are these what the kids call programming languages these days?
It doesn't sound very serious.

It is all the NSA needs to get access to your Internet Connected device. That means everything nowadays, including my Linux toaster.

Yes, I am very sceptical if I see the letters N, S and A. (It isn't paranoia, because that is only when you THINK you are being followed, not when it becomes a fact.)

Programming language?

[Anonymous Coward]

CSS: not a programming language.
HTML: not a programming language.
PHP: not a programming language.

Note: I'm a web developer mostly these days, I write a bucket of each of these. I'm a computer science educated professional and I also write a lot of code in Java and C++. I really like PHP. It is however not a bloody programming language, it's a scripting language.

Re:Programming language?

[pspahn]

So in order to be a programming language it has to be compiled instead of interpreted?

Where does compiled PHP fit into your world view?

Re:Programming language?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd agree with the parent that CSS and HTML aren't programming languages, PHP and Javascript on the other hand could be called programming languages OR scripting languages.

Re:Programming language?

[gweihir]

Well, PHP is a programming language, just not really a general-purpose one.

Anyways, web-stuff is a small part of programming, and not really an important one as it is pretty limited.

Re:Programming language?

[Capsaicin]

I really like PHP. It is however not a bloody programming language, it's a scripting language.

I really hate PHP, but what I hate even more is being confronted with this mysterious distinction between "scripting" and "programming" languages.

A language might be strongly or weakly, dynamically or statically typed. A particular implementation might employ a compiler, a virtual machine or interpreter. These are meaningful distinctions. But what (with the possible exception of a hardware specific control language) does it even mean for a language (as distinct from its implementation) to be a "scripting" language?

Would PHP cease to be a scripting language if an object code compiler were available for it? Is 'C' a "scripting language" just because it's interpreted? And what about a language which has never actually been implemented, what in the language specification determines unequivocally if that language is 'scripting' or a a 'programming' language?

Re:Programming language?

[DocHoncho]

That's a distinction without a difference. All "scripting languages" are programming languages, quibbling over whether the particular domain a language is used in makes it a "real" language or not is fodder for arrogant asses who need to make others seem smaller to boost their own pathetic egos.

Obviously, different languages have different strengths and weaknesses. You wouldn't write an OS kernel in JavaScript, and you wouldn't write system administration automation in C++. Sneering at the domain of one language or another is just useless posturing.

Re:Programming language?

[DocHoncho]

The distinction is determined solely by the prejudices of whomever is bothering to make it. Scripting is a domain in which a programming language is used, not some basic attribute of it. You could use C to write your system automation tools, but it would be a waste of time when a simple Bash script would get the job done quicker and in a far more concise manner. Likewise, you could write your virtualization software in Ruby but its going to be dog slow, and probably full of weird hacks to make shit work.

Programming languages are for solving problems, and depending on the problem you may need the higher level of abstraction provided by a so-called scripting language. Others are better served by getting as close to the metal as possible. Not every problem requires getting bogged down in the minute details of memory allocation, hardware IRQs, or chipset specific instructions. It might make it fast as hell, but you could easily get lost in the weeds and never end up solving the real problem at hand.

Re:Programming language?

[StripedCow]

[quote]
CSS: not a programming language.
HTML: not a programming language.
[/quote]

CSS and HTML are such devious piles of junk, they should be turing complete by now.

Re:Programming language?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Agreed. Assembly is just a scripting language for microprocessors. C is just a scripting language for the compiler back-end. The OP did a terrible job of making his case.

Which behaviour?

[NotInHere]

This program is valid C and, when saved as "test2.java", valid java code. Compilation with the C compiler results in a program that doesn't behave the same way if it were compiled with java:

//\
/*
#include "stdio.h"
/**///\
public class test2 {

//\
public static
void main //\
(String[]a)//\
/*
(int argc, char *argv[])//*/
{
  //\
  System.out.printf("hi, I'm java\n");/*
  printf("hi, I'm C\n");//*/
}

//\
}

Re:Which behaviour?

[fisted]

void main(int argc, char *argv[])

valid C

Nope. Not valid C. Valid would be int main(void), int main(int argc, char **argv)(and equivalent), and in some cases int main(int argc, char **argv, char **envp) (and equivalent).
Source

Re:Which behaviour?

[gweihir]

Depends on the standard. Even "main()" can be valid.

Re:Which behaviour?

[fisted]

Depends on the standard.

No. None of the C Standards ever had void a valid return type for main, and, frankly all of them (since we're talking standards, that means C89 through C11) give you int main(void) and int main(int argc, char **argv)(and equivalent).
It's not like i didn't link a source.

Even "main()" can be valid.

Yes, C89 allowed leaving away the int, that's called "implicit int". Needless to point out, the return type is still int.

Re:Which behaviour?

[gweihir]

"main()" does not have void as return type, it has "no return type specified". You are also not going back far enough if C89 is the first thing you look at and you are constraining your search too much if you require an "IOS" Standard. There are others around, even if bodies like ISO would probably say they are not standards. Not so.
 

Re:Which behaviour?

[fisted]

You talked about standards, and C89 is the first formal C standard. I'm sorry for your C knowledge if you are indeed oblivious of implicit int (hint: you can and must still return an int from "main([void])".
Furthermore probably sucks to think that a function taking no parameters like foo(void) and a function taking an unspecified number of parameters like foo() and (void) were the same thing. Your mind might be a bit C++-damaged (in C++, foo() in fact means foo(void)).
Educate much?
Consider char (*foo(int))[4];
What's the type of foo?

Re:Which behaviour?

[gweihir]

"Formal standards" are a small subset of all standards. Your abuse of language does not make you right in any way. As to your Ad Hominem: It clearly shows you are a troll and not interested in the subject here at all. This also marks you as a sadist that gets off on talking down to people. Pathetic.

As to qualifications and education, without going into specifics, my guess would be that I am so far beyond your level that you cannot even grasp where I am. Nit-picking like you do (and grandstanding about it) is the hallmark of a small and truly limited mind.

Re:Which behaviour?

[david_thornley]

The problem with not using formal standards is that it makes each individual implementation or book a standard, and it is impossible to say what a language requires without knowing all the implementations and books. K&R 1st edition can be said to be a standard, but not the only one. Hence, to avoid confusing the issue, people normally consider only formal standards as standards. Also, look at the "//" comments, which were not legal in K&R or C89/C90. A K&R C compiler would barf on the "///*..." part, and a later standard compiler would not recognize "void main", so you're wrong no matter what sort of "standard" you use.

In any case, the statement was "Not valid C", not "Never has been valid C", and was in contrast to the original claim "valid C", which is false. It could be made into valid C, but that's another statement.l

Re:Which behaviour?

[fisted]

[...] shows you are a troll [...] also marks you as a sadist [...] I am so far beyond your level [...]

This makes your original claim less wrong how exactly?
Since you're so far beyond my level, it should be trivial to point out in which standard, (be it formal or informal, to lower the bar a bit for you) void main() is "valid C".
Protip.

That being said, i have nothing to add to sibling's post.

They've re-invented PL/1

[Required Snark]

And we know how well that worked the last time.

Re:They've re-invented PL/1

[erice]

And we know how well that worked the last time.

Nah. They've re-invented Ada.

Ada is when they re-invented PL/1.

Hmm. What comes after strike 2?

Re:They've re-invented PL/1

[HiThere]

Sorry, but PL/1 was a decent language with atrocious subsets at rediculous prices. The compiler was also large and slow. And I had some problems with it's "intelligent type conversion"s. But you've got to remember what other languages were around at the time. It hadn't learned Object Oriented programming. Etc. But it made safe use of pointers rather easy. I wrote my first Red-Black tree in PL/1 and it was a lot easier both to do and to understand than the one I did later in C.

OTOH, I must admit that I was coming to it from Fortran and never did pick up the Cobol parts of it, except for picture type variables, which I occasionally found useful. (Doing dynamic format statements in Fortran IV was quite difficult.)

Re:They've re-invented PL/1

[mrego]

Sorry, but it is PL/I not "PL/1". The 'I' is a Roman numeral. PL/I PL/I PL/I. There never was a PL/1. Got it?

Re:They've re-invented PL/1

[HiThere]

I've seen it both ways in IBM documentation. It is the numeral one, but I think sometimes they were thinking in Roman Numerals, and other times in Arabic.

Re:How to get rid of the robot spam ?

[Desler]

Maybe it should have been written in Wyvern to be more secure?

Why is scripting better than an amalgation of CSS?

[Jartan]

I really don't understand this. Almost every site I go to does the same damn crap with Javascript and all of it could be done with other technologies.

LLVM's logo is a wyvern

[Henriok]

May I point out that the LLVM logo is a wyvern? http://llvm.org/Logo.html

Keep away from it

[Mister Liberty]

It's supposed to help the NSA, and to hurt you in the end.

if it did, that would eliminate my bugs

[raymorris]

It doesn't do what the summary says.

If it did, that would take care of half of my bugs. Within a 30-minute period, I might well work in PHP, Perl, ActionScript, JavaScript, and some other language. A large portion of my errors are things like using empty() in JavaScript. Especially, ActionScript is almost the same as JavaScript, and a lot of Perl is also valid PHP, so when switching between these it's easy to absent-mindedly tap out a line in the wrong language.

Once upon a time, I used vim syntax highlighting, which doesn't typically catch using the right syntax, but the wrong function name, but does make missed braces and such obvious. Maybe I should right a vim plugin for "wrong language, dummy." It would look for echo (phph vs print (Perl), etc.

Re:if it did, that would eliminate my bugs

[istartedi]

This reminds me of ls.bat and various other little .bat files people put on DOS and Windows machines for obvious reasons.

Re:Urgently needed for /. --- An 'un-friend' featu

[rmdingler]

Jelly's comments suffer in quality when his Ritalin prescription is used up only half way through the month.

There's a comment threshold feature that effectively eliminates your ability to see low rated comments, which these ravings are rendered to with a quickness thanks to a rather decent moderation scheme.

Caveat: two or three of the smartest things I've ever read on here were, at least at one point, low threshold.

But does it do FORTRAN?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it can't do Fortran, I don't want it.

All programming languages?

[rossdee]

Does it do APL ? Forth ? 6502 assembler?

Re:All programming languages?

[wvmarle]

They forgot to add the distiction "... your average script-kiddie has ever heard of".

OMG!

[msobkow]

They've re-invented PL/1!

Its really too bad...

[Karmashock]

The NSA's reputation has been annihilated. There are good people that work for such organizations. People that could and do benefit our society on a regular basis. Their institution was simply coopted by irresponsible people that sadly destroyed everything. Its a shame.

Re:Its really too bad...

[wvmarle]

Maybe it's time to reanimate (D)ARPA - the guys that gave us the Internet.

Re:Its really too bad...

[DoofusOfDeath]

The only NSA employee I'd trust is John Casey.

Re:Its really too bad...

[DoofusOfDeath]

Maybe it's time to reanimate Al Gore?

FTFY

[QilessQi]

"Web applications today are written as a poorly-coordinated mishmash of artifacts written in different languages, file formats, and technologies.

"...and here's another one!"

Re:FTFY

[complete loony]

Obligatory

Wyvern = Wyrm

[AHuxley]

New filesystems and databases might show up as less people trust the same old tame providers that decrypt for the US gov as installed.
But the good news for the USA is the data will still have connect with say international billing and other US set global standards.
Thats where a system like this might be fun. You dont have to care what the backend was, just what is sent as known, expected, decrypted data.
Pulling useful data from new bespoke communications streams will be like setting the old standards. You still get to collect it all at some point in on the NSA's global network no matter how fancy nations and firms get internally.
Re 'Why didn't this come up with itself before now?" because it was all like ENIGMA 2.0 - plain text for the USA/UK over decades thanks to tame exported crypto that always had a trap or back door.
Now you have to hunt for fragments of the same messages in strange new net code. The standards are still US set, so you know what your looking for :)

Jellomizer

[weilawei]

Jellomizer has multiple posts all dated with 7:12 PM. Now, as a Slashdot member over the years, with excellent karma, I can't even post that fast, regardless of what I'm posting. What allows Jellomizer, without the consent of the editors/admins, to post spam repeatedly, without any time delay?

Re:Urgently needed for /. --- An 'un-friend' featu

[weilawei]

Allowing blatant spam to drown AC comments is likely the goal. Still not sure how Jellomizer posts over 20 (20+!!!) posts in under 6 minutes even IF they had excellent karma. This smacks of a slashcode bug or editor collusion. Normal users won't suffer because of the karma bonus, but affected users will include any ACs making relevant points. Allowing the spam to continue unabated will simply result in controversial viewpoints (held legitimately, posted AC to preserve reputation) being drowned out. For further reference, google Forum Slide.

Re:How to get rid of the robot spam ?

[weilawei]

What I really want to know is... how the fuck does a registered user post over 20+ posts in under 6 minutes without being filtered by the "you must wait X minutes" filter. This smacks of a slashcode exploit or editor collusion. I'm a registered user with Excellent karma, and I can't post anywhere NEAR that fast.

Re: How to get rid of the robot spam ?

[weilawei]

That's fine and wonderful, but some of us browse at -1 because some people make great points as an AC. This sort of spamming blatantly denies those people a voice.

stupid argument

[globaljustin]

CSS & HTML5 ***are*** code languages for programming machine behavior

*at the presentation level*

it's not an "original gangster" hardcore badass super 1337 C#+! language...it's not complex or "bragable" at a gathering of dorks trying to impress each other...

but it's symbols that form a code that humans use to 'program' machine behavior...that's a programming language

just accept it, once and for all, and stop all of you....just stop

it doesnt make your skillz any less bragable...it's a coding language...mostly visual design oriented...

***HTML5&CSS are not threats to your bragging rights***

Re:stupid argument

[nabsltd]

CSS & HTML5 ***are*** code languages for programming machine behavior

CSS & HTML5 are data that is interpreted by a computer program. They are not "code languages". The rule of thumb is that without some sort of control structure (if/then/else, loops, etc.), it's just data.

For HTML, this becomes obvious once you see how many real languages (JavaScript, PHP, ColdFusion, VisualBasic/ASP, etc.) have been created to overcome its lack of control structures.

Re:stupid argument

[Wraithlyn]

But PRESENTATION (how something looks) and BEHAVIOUR (how something acts) are two different things.

Saying "programming machine behaviour... at the presentation level" is a nonsensical statement. HTML/CSS define content & presentation. They do not "program behaviour".

Or as Wiki puts it, "The purpose of programming is to find a sequence of instructions that will automate performing a specific task or solve a given problem". HTML & CSS simply do not qualify. They are certainly computer languages, but they are not computer programming languages.

And for fuck's sake, having a clear definition of what "programming" means is not about "bragging rights".

Re:stupid argument

[geminidomino]

HTML/CSS define content & presentation. They do not "program behaviour".

Back when I had to explain this to some students I was tutoring, I basically said that HTML and CSS aren't programming languages, they're input.

They seemed to understand it after that (they were, apparently, a lot sharper than what passes for slashdotters, these days)

Re: stupid argument

[Wraithlyn]

It's an abbreviation, for fuck's sake.

And the full domain [wikipedia.org] is clearly displayed next to the actual link, so... seriously? Do you think anybody was actually confused about what I was linking to?

Re:Urgently needed for /. --- An 'un-friend' featu

[BitZtream]

Login, mark him as a foe, his posts will no longer show for you.

Every few years...

[Adam Jorgensen]

...someone comes along and tries to re-invent the wheel and gift us with the ability to write in a single "unified" language that crosses the lines demarcating server and client.

Except it's inevitably a pile of hacky shit that is founded on a basic faulty idea.

all of those and more...

[OneSmartFellow]

I can tell you now, I'll never use it.
Anthing based upon HTML or CSS is guaranteed to be a unmaintainable crap. Put them together, and you have the largest pile of shite ever !

Re:THESE BLAST BOINTS

[asylumx]

I don't know that anyone would call the storm troopers "accurate" though...

"bad press", "interested in security"

[sacrilicious]

Because despite recent bad press, they are interested in security.

Your post makes various other points that sound reasonable to me, but I have to call out the above line from a couple of angles:

1) using the phrase "bad press" implies a virtuous subject that has been distorted by a reporting industry with a non-virtuous agenda. NOTHING OF THE SORT has happened to poor lil' NSA here... they FUCKED us, straight up, and got caught red-handed.

2) Whatever the extent to which the NSA is "interested in security", it might as well be the extent to which a wolf is interested in "keeping chickens alive"... yes the wolf wants a food supply, but that doesn't make the wolf a proponent of livestock. The NSA is all about surveillance at this point; their putting on the badge of promoting security is a means to an end. I won't rehash the extensive list of public standards they secretly compromised to that end; it speaks for itself.

Again, I think much of what you wrote makes sense, but in this particular line you stray notably too far into something approaching neutrality about the NSA. They are bad people with a bad agenda, and they'll fuck YOU the first chance they get.

Re:"bad press", "interested in security"

[kaputtfurleben]

"Bad press" doesn't necessarily imply a virtuous subject being distorted, it can also imply articles that are generally interpreted as negative. Journalism is supposed to be impartial after all (though it doesn't always end up that way). And the NSA aren't "bad people with a bad agenda" because "bad" is about as subjective as it gets. They are just not moving toward the same goals that you or others are.

Re:"bad press", "interested in security"

[Ksevio]

Form the NSA's perspective, they are interested in security - while the NSA itself has numerous means of getting into a system (including some legal ones!), they don't want China or random hackers to be taking control of systems. They're overall goal is security of the US, so while one arm is doing that by trying to collect all the information, another arm is doing that by locking down everything.

Re:"bad press", "interested in security"

[lucien86]

Form the NSA's perspective, they are interested in security - while the NSA itself has numerous means of getting into a system (including some legal ones!), they don't want China or random hackers to be taking control of systems. They're overall goal is security of the US, ....

That is why their previous approach to security once exposed became such an enormous own goal. The whole problem with backdoors is that once someone knows about them anyone can use them. And the problem with hacking munitions is that once used, they can be taken up by the victim or others and used as a (dangerous) learning tool to create more new weapons.., - eg stuxnet..

Naive predictions

[DavidHumus]

Without having looked at the post or scrutinized the language, here's a couple of guesses:
1) looks like C: i.e. verbose, vacuous, loopy.
2) has crappy (i.e. industry-standard) array-handling.
3) fails to incorporate any of the decades of research about how people approach problems versus how programming languages do.

Re:Urgently needed for /. --- An 'un-friend' featu

[rmdingler]

Indeed.

Though since this is Slashdot, there's virtually zero chance this is the first (or the last) instance of a disgruntled nerd with some coding skill.

Can't you just picture the editors, worked up into a frenzy this Monday morning, feverishly pursuing a solution?

Have you checked out the code?

[dnebin]

module CalculatorType

import wyv:parser.wyv

import java:wyvern.tools.parsing.ExtParser
import java:wyvern.tools.parsing.HasParser
import java:wyvern.tools.parsing.ParseBuffer
import java:wyvern.tools.typedAST.interfaces.TypedAST

type Calculator
def eval():Int
metadata:HasParser = new
def getParser():ExtParser = new
def parse(buf:ParseBuffer):TypedAST
val oNum = CalcParser.CalculatorParser.create(buf.getSrcString()).E()
~
new
def eval():Int = $oNum

This is supposed to make me feel this is a)secure and b) more bug free?

Re:Have you checked out the code?

[retchdog]

i guess i'm kinda stupid. keeping in mind that it's example code, what's wrong with it exactly?

Re:Perl?

[Kiaser Zohsay]

Perl was a polyglot before it was cool. Hipster Perl.

definition is clear

[globaljustin]

presentation is behavior...in fact, if all you have is a monitor **all behavior is presentation**

if use HTML5 to tell a computer to display a black background when you go to a URL

OR i could do the same to ****PROGRAM**** the computer to display a white background when you go to a URL

either way, user enters data (URL in browser) and computer returns a ***PROGRAMMED*** response

programmed using HTML5 so that the browser knows it's the *background* that is to be black, not another part

that's programming no matter how you define it...the definition of programming is clear

what's not clear is why people think HTML & CSS are not programming

it is...accept it

Re:definition is clear

[atownsley]

HTML and CSS are very much akin to Perl. They are interpreted languages, meaning some other compiled application reads them and then decides how to interpret the commands. For lack of a better way of putting it, these are scripting languages.

In comparison, languages like C#, C++, etc.. are compiled into machine language (yes there are CLRs and other associated binaries).

This does not diminish the fact that HTML / CSS developers are in fact programming at the presentation layer, but it does mean that HTML / CSS are "scripting" languages (again I am using "scripting" for lack of a better term, and by no means do I mean it to demean the skills required code in HTML / CSS vs. C#).

From a theoretical perspective there is a difference. From a programming perspective the differences get much much grayer.

-Andy

Re:definition is clear

[_anomaly_]

The phrase "programming language" is so vague that it's wide open for interpretation. That's why I'm not going to say you're wrong, which was my first inclination, but simply disagree with you.

My definition of a programming language is that which is compilable into machine-readable form.

Now you're going to say, "HTML can be compiled into machine-readable form, it's displayed on your screen, isn't it?!". Yes, the content that originated from HTML (and others) is displayed on your screen, but that's because the browser is interpreting the HTML and then displaying it. Like someone else already responded to you and said, HTML is data, or more specifically structured content.

An analogy that may help distinguish HTML (and CSS and the like) from what I consider programming languages would be to take printing a certificate using a word processor. The words and images you insert into the word processor isn't a "programming language". It's a "template" which is used by the printer in order to display the content (on paper), just like browsers that use the HTML to display the content (on the screen).
HTML tags for forms, different types of media, etc. kind of blur the lines a little bit because they instruct the browser to perform certain actions, but that doesn't invalidate the interpretation of HTML as a display template, or data.

Re:definition is clear

[globaljustin]

well thanks for an intelligent response

i'm fine with agreeing to disagree, as long as we work to end the argument...it's the noise of the argument that irks me so much...it's a stupid thing to argue about and it hurts our industry b/c people new to "coding" and "programming" are hopelessly lost

Re:definition is clear

[globaljustin]

i can agree with everything you said...as I said below to someone else, it's the arguing over linguistic differences of words ad infinitum and how it effects the work environment of coding/programming that gets me hot under the collar

Re:definition is clear

[david_thornley]

From a theoretical perspective, there is no difference between an interpreted and a compiled language, since any language can be compiled and any can be interpreted. "interpreted" and "compiled" apply to implementations of languages, and there are all sorts of shades in between.

It might make sense, from a practical point of view, to distinguish between usually compiled and usually interpreted, but this changes over time. Lisp was always interpreted when it was new, and now any decent implementation compiles it (and the compiler needs to be available at run time).

then all code is data

[globaljustin]

you can't redefine "coding" by calling everything "data"

it's instructions for a machine...that's coding...

you're playing linguistic games & no matter how you do it you're still wrong functionally

Re:then all code is data

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that a "programming language" is something that is Turing-complete. Neither HTML nor CSS are. They are mark-up languages - they mark up data in a format that allows it to be machine-processed. JavaScript is a Turing-complete programming language.

Jack of all trades, master of none

[Tony Isaac]

This is the problem with languages that try to be everything...they aren't really good at anything.

Nice one NSA: The Exact Opposite of HTML5

[tomxor]

CSS + HTML + Javascript is how your HTML file used to look... (A big fucking mess).

Massive monolithic source files are not helpful. What is the purpose of this?

Google, Apple attempting similar?

[peter303]

Go, swift were supposed to be more global Internet languages than their predecessors.
Then too, corporate derived projects arent necesarily as good as a celver grad student project.

Re:Wyvern will go the way of ADA (RIP)

[Tablizer]

Ada actually has some nice properties, but its sheer number of features makes it difficult to learn and find developers for.

Committees do tend to catch feature-itus because they try to make everybody on the committee happy. It's difficult to get good pruning of features from committees. They are pretty good at generating ideas, but NOT good at weighing trade-offs by saying "no" to the right things.

Terminology Fight!

[Tablizer]

Where is the official rule that "programming languages" have to be Turing Complete?

And don't...say HTML5 + CSS3 is turing complete

They are to a good hacker.

'turing complete' means nothing

[globaljustin]

i thought we were past this 'turing complete' shit...

seriously, given the right conditions, I can piss in a jar and it can be 'turing complete'

Turing did some very good work, obviously, but the whole computability function test has been shown to be reductive and just an abstraction

machines execute instructions. end.

Re:no it's symbols

[globaljustin]

an alphabet is a set of symbols

some languages have few...others, many

binary the former, chinese the latter

And it's called...

[kenh]

ADA++

Re:And it's called...

[cwsumner]

ADA++

Actually, it does sound like that!
Although Ada is intended more for critical-mission programs.

All?

[cwsumner]

The news release of -every- new computer language says it will replace all others. It has not happened yet, maybe next century...