I've created meanwhile a RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/FactorProgrammingLanguage1 not sure, how well does it work, but this feedburner thing is referenced in Blogger's help.
Excellent, thanks (guess I wasn't patient enough). I don't know much about Atom but it seems like rss2email deals with it just fine so I'm happy. :)
I have a suggestion for a future blog post if you're up to it. I've been following your blog for a while and it's pretty clear that you're down on Java (to make an understatement). I'm a web programmer (I know, boo hiss, but it pays the bills) who's pretty much fed up with PHP, which as I'm sure you know is pretty much utter garbage as a language. I'm looking for something to move to, and I was pretty much sold on Java up until I started reading your blog. If you have any thoughts on programming for dynamic web sites (as in, what languages and platforms you'd choose to use if forced to do such a thing) I'd love to see a future blog post about it. I think I've seen you state your dislike for Python as well, so I'm just curious what you would pick (keeping in mind that some of us are forced to interact with systems such as MS SQL server, etc.). Just a suggestion. Thanks!
derelictman: I would also like to hear Slava's comments on this. In my opinion, the web model is fundamentally different than your average desktop programming model, in that there are extra synchronicity issues as well as the problem of maintaining state, and having to push your state through a very narrow window with a flat namespace of only primitive values. This makes rich, interactive sites very cumbersome, and in the worst case the server logic basically devolves into a gigantic hand-rolled finite state machine to which it is hard to apply typical programming conveniences. Perhaps this model is more suited to something like continuations...I have never played with RIFE though. I haven't seen any framework that really makes this usable. But if you are developing on PHP, anything is a step up ;) Don't worry about Java/JSP. It will be 10x better than PHP. You could also do yourself a favor and take a look at Ruby on Rails, although I have to admit it looks mostly like hype and smoke and mirrors at this point, and I'd be surprised if anybody would be comfortable with you building anything significant on such a new, niche, platform.
derilictman: For web programming, you could of course use Factor, which has a continuation-based web server, an html generation library, and an xml parser/generator, but a more stable language might be to more your liking (we recently renamed the word for conditionals). Slava often speaks highly of Slate and Common Lisp (especially ABCL). I think there are continuation-based web libraries for CL using cps tranform macros, but I don't think they exist for Slate. Anyway, not everything needs continuations, as Ruby on Rails demonstrates.
Thanks for the suggestions. The problem with using something like Factor for me is that I'm stuck with the requirement of interacting with MS SQL server. This is beyond my control, unfortunately...we have dozens of legacy applications that interact with this database, and a DBA that is unwilling to work with anything else. :( That's the reason why I'm even a little hesitant to use something like Ruby on Rails, since I'm not sure how mature Ruby's MS SQL drivers are. I guess I need to do some experimenting with it. Thanks for all the suggestions.
7 comments:
Hi Slava,
Will there be an RSS feed for this blog? I hope so. :) Thanks...
There is an Atom feed. I added a link to the sidebar.
I've created meanwhile a RSS feed at
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FactorProgrammingLanguage1
not sure, how well does it work, but this feedburner thing is referenced in Blogger's help.
Excellent, thanks (guess I wasn't patient enough). I don't know much about Atom but it seems like rss2email deals with it just fine so I'm happy. :)
I have a suggestion for a future blog post if you're up to it. I've been following your blog for a while and it's pretty clear that you're down on Java (to make an understatement). I'm a web programmer (I know, boo hiss, but it pays the bills) who's pretty much fed up with PHP, which as I'm sure you know is pretty much utter garbage as a language. I'm looking for something to move to, and I was pretty much sold on Java up until I started reading your blog. If you have any thoughts on programming for dynamic web sites (as in, what languages and platforms you'd choose to use if forced to do such a thing) I'd love to see a future blog post about it. I think I've seen you state your dislike for Python as well, so I'm just curious what you would pick (keeping in mind that some of us are forced to interact with systems such as MS SQL server, etc.). Just a suggestion. Thanks!
derelictman: I would also like to hear Slava's comments on this. In my opinion, the web model is fundamentally different than your average desktop programming model, in that there are extra synchronicity issues as well as the problem of maintaining state, and having to push your state through a very narrow window with a flat namespace of only primitive values. This makes rich, interactive sites very cumbersome, and in the worst case the server logic basically devolves into a gigantic hand-rolled finite state machine to which it is hard to apply typical programming conveniences. Perhaps this model is more suited to something like continuations...I have never played with RIFE though. I haven't seen any framework that really makes this usable. But if you are developing on PHP, anything is a step up ;) Don't worry about Java/JSP. It will be 10x better than PHP. You could also do yourself a favor and take a look at Ruby on Rails, although I have to admit it looks mostly like hype and smoke and mirrors at this point, and I'd be surprised if anybody would be comfortable with you building anything significant on such a new, niche, platform.
derilictman: For web programming, you could of course use Factor, which has a continuation-based web server, an html generation library, and an xml parser/generator, but a more stable language might be to more your liking (we recently renamed the word for conditionals). Slava often speaks highly of Slate and Common Lisp (especially ABCL). I think there are continuation-based web libraries for CL using cps tranform macros, but I don't think they exist for Slate. Anyway, not everything needs continuations, as Ruby on Rails demonstrates.
LittleDan and anonymous:
Thanks for the suggestions. The problem with using something like Factor for me is that I'm stuck with the requirement of interacting with MS SQL server. This is beyond my control, unfortunately...we have dozens of legacy applications that interact with this database, and a DBA that is unwilling to work with anything else. :( That's the reason why I'm even a little hesitant to use something like Ruby on Rails, since I'm not sure how mature Ruby's MS SQL drivers are. I guess I need to do some experimenting with it. Thanks for all the suggestions.
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