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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.
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?
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
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
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)
"What's your favorite programming language? Is it CSS?"
Why yes, I just love writing VoIP systems in CSS.
Wasn't there some discussion on how effective a special, compiler-embedded virus would be? This seems like a good candidate for that.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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...
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
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.
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:
(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.
Yeah, about as skilled and effective as past Israeli-Palestinian negotiators...
To write better Apps and Websites?
Are these what the kids call programming languages these days?
It doesn't sound very serious.
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.
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");//*/
}
//\
}
May I point out that the LLVM logo is a wyvern? http://llvm.org/Logo.html
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
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.
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.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Indeed. And JavaScript and PHP are special-purpose languages that are unfit to be user in a general setting. The OP has no clue.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Does it do APL ? Forth ? 6502 assembler?
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"...and here's another one!"
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Sad thing is that not even you know if you're being sarcastic or not.
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.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.