RE: Y Store /Closures

["Brent Fulgham" <address@hidden>]

> Avi: You've gone from "cannot be done" to "cannot be done in as many
> lines of code". I won't take that bait, Sorry. Because the lines of
> code you are focussed on reducing is not what I (and other enterprise
> developers are focused on -- supporting the back button in the manner
> you describe is less than 5% of my use-cases). Thanks. I'll conclude
> that thus far you seem to agree that in principle you can do w/out
> continuations, but perhaps *you* think that in languages w/out such
> support it might be verbose to implement "some" such traversals.
> Would that be a fair characterization?

Obviously languages that do not support closures and continuations can
be modified to incorporate them.  I'm not sure what your point is --
many Lisps are written in C.  So what?  I don't think it's a valid
argument to say "Closures and continuations are nice, but since a
theoretical implementation of such is possible in Java I must not need
them."  It would be like me saying that C is a perfectly acceptable
alternative for web development than Java, simply because Java's
features could be written in C.

It's like Mike's point a few days ago:  One of Java's big features is
the vast library support.  Well, all we are saying is that continuations
and closures represent an equally important feature, and that languages
that *have* these constructs are superior for building web applications
(and other things) to languages that lack them.
 
> Personally speaking, I agree -- but the important distinction to make
> is that customers are asking for more than just what the web
> environment provides. So, I really wonder how long 
> this backtrackable-forkable HTML/HTTP driven interface period will
> last (already I have customers that are happier running a 
> heavy rich-lient app fronted by the likes of Citrix :).
> 

Now this I *can* agree with.  The main benefit of the web paradigm that
I can see (from a customer standpoint) is that web applications do not
have to be replicated across client machines.  So, for example, a large
financial institution running a web application can update the servers
to reflect new features, but the loan officers and tellers can show up
for work the next day with no down time.

C#/.NET does seem to support this facility in a thick client mode
using the included distribution tools, as I think Java does with the
"web start" functionality.  It will be interesting to see how these
features evolve in the next few years.

Thanks,

-Brent