January 18, 2005

via Slashdot | Are Extensible Programming Languages Coming?

Slashdot | Are Extensible Programming Languages Coming?

gManZboy writes "Programming writer and instructor Greg Wilson is proposing that the next generation of programming languages will use XML to store not only such things as formatting (so you can see indentation your way, and I can see it my way, via XSLT) but even programmatic entities -- like: <invoke-expr method="myMethod"><evaluate>record</evaluate></invoke-expr>. Wacky, but perhaps wacky enough to be possible?"

My first take on this title was "aren't all programming languages extensible" and then I came to my senses and realized the keyword here was "language" not "code base". My next thought was "it's not whacky at all and in fact they already exist right now."

Dimitre's FXSL library is a fantastic example of embracing XSLT and extending it to contain a more complete implementation of a pure functional language. The EXSLT project is another perfect example. Whats really funny to me is that this "concept" is considered new? Lisp, second (amongst languages still in use today) in age only to Fortran, is built entirely around the extensible concept as is a myriad of other examples. I should probably read more than the first snippet of this article before I question what is meant by this comment so for now I will just leave it at this. I was actually just taking a quick break before I go back under to finalize a few more things on this sites design as well as UnderstandingXSLT.com site design. I'll come back to this later and see what more there is to add or subtract from my comments...