Wadler's Blog

Another web framework for dynamic content: OCaml web SIte GENerator.
From Vincent Balat and others at PPS, Paris VII. Here is their summary. Usual stuff with type systems and continuations. No generation of Javascript to run on the client.

I used to think of grid computing as a coming technology for e-Science. But this article from The New Yorker (10 Oct 2005) shows that grids are here and now, used for spam, identity theft, and cyberextortion. Here is a quote:

The process is called “herding,” and a herd of zombies is called a botnet. The herder then issues orders to the zombies, telling them to send unsolicited e-mail, steal personal information, or launch attacks. Herders also trade, rent, and sell their zombies. “The botnet is the little engine that makes the evil of the Internet work,” Chris Morrow, a senior network-security engineer at M.C.I., said. “It makes spam work. It makes identity fraud work. It makes extortion, in this case, work.”

Yet another Javascript AJAX library. This one is well supported, backed by a major player, and open source. Is this the right library for Links to integrate with? Recommended by Mark Engelberg. Mark notes this library supports animation well, which he thinks will be essential in the future of the web.

Gilad Bracha argues that continuations (as used by Paul Graham, PLT Scheme, Seaside, Ruby on Rails, and Links, among others) are not so important that it is worthwhile to add continuations to Java. He begins with a nice recap of the classic Orbitz example, which first came to my attention (and his) through the efforts of Shriram Krishnamurthi and the PLT Scheme folk. Thanks to Rodney Topor for pointing me at this.

I don't buy parts of his argument, although I suspect his conclusion may be right. It's *really* expensive to add a fundamental feature like continuations to Java, so it had better be incredibly valuable. Java doesn't even support plain old tail recursion, which is even more fundamental than continuations.

There are follow ups from Gilad Bracha, Tim Bray, and David Megginson.

Shiram Krishnamurthi on the advantage of Scheme, with an emphasis on macros and embedding domain-specific languages.

A package for typesetting programs in Latex. Spotted by Jeremy.

Yet another AJAX framework. Unlike Links, it doesn't tackle integration of client with server and database. It compiles to Flash and they are working on compiling to DHTML. (I suppose DHTML means Javascript, but its not entirely clear; the demo appears to be broken!) I like the 'Learn Laszlo in Ten Minutes' demo, as it lets you modify and rerun all examples on the fly.

Seaside: A radically productive framework, by Bruce Tate. Spotted on Chris Double's blog.

Spotted by George Michaelson (brother of Greg Michaelson), and forwarded by Sam. Scheme in JavaScript by Alex Yakovlev. Originally noted in Chris Double's blog, which cites Links.

Spotted by George Michaelson (brother of Greg Michaelson), and forwarded by Sam. A scripting system with an Oberon-to-Javascript compiler, by Ralph Sommerer at Microsoft Research Cambridge. "Oberon Script is a scripting language and runtime system for building interactive Web Client applications."

Spotted by Jeremy. The authors write:

"Hop is a new higher-order language designed for programming
interactive web applications such as web agendas, web galleries,
music players, etc. ...

"As far as we know, the closest work to Hop is due to Philip Wadler and his colleagues. The Links programming language shares the goal of Hop. As Hop, Links is a functional language that manages transparent function calls across the web. In contrast to Hop, it relies on a single syntax approach. That is, the GUI stratum of Links programs is compiled to JavaScript before being executed on the client. Links seems less advanced than Hop because, as far as we can tell, it does not support construction similar to service calls and it does not support event loops."