Re: A language idea: Elle

[Daniel Weinreb <address@hidden>]

Sundar Narasimhan wrote:

>   A lot of those folks are sighing at how useful the LAMP ("Linux, Apache,
>   MySQL, Perl") architecture is. So how do you make something that easy,
>   but still keep it buzzword-compatible?
>
>It does not need to be buzzword compatible. It just has to solve the
>problems that real web application developers face. 
>
And even then, not all web application developers are in the same boat 
as each other.
I think that what you're calling "LAMP" is more applicable to smaller 
than larger web
service providers.  As you get to systems that are a lot bigger and more 
complex, that
have to integrate many legacy systems, that need more strict and complex 
modularity
(in particular, that benefit from a three-tier architecture for the 
reasons that they are
good, which I won't try to enumerate here), that need to scale way up to 
very high
page hit rates, very high inter-application message rates, that need 
"high" "availability"
and extreme reliability, things get harder.  Linux and Apache are still 
quite applicable
but MySQL and Perl can run out of gas.

>
>Today .. providing a sophisticated client gui (i.e. one that exploits
>the desktop in a way that users have come to expect) coupled w/ HTML
>and a robust server architecture on the back-end (i.e. even if you
>assume you are write a single two-tiered system as opposed to an
>n-tiered one) is *still* a challenge.
>
I agree.

Regarding the UI, one approach is the one used by Laszlo Systems, which 
those of you
who were at LL2 heard something about.  There are other companies 
pursuing approaches
that have some things in common, e.g. Nexaweb and Altio.

>
>- lightweight languages seem to be great for scripting "other"
>  systems, so perhaps there is a way of innovatively combining client
>  interfaces and back-end server processes?
>
>(ps. you can perhaps sense where I'm going -- drop the buzzwords,
>Java/XML etc. concentrate on the problem.. solve that, and the rest
>will follow :)
>
If (I'm not sure) you are saying that Java and XML are worthless 
technologies, merely
"buzzwords", I do not agree.  If you are saying that the important thing 
is to solve
the problem, rather than to pre-decide to use Java and XML merely 
because they
are frequently-mentioned, I agree.


>  
>