With a mighty <19970418.79D47D0.8C38@contessa.phone.net>,
bouncenews@contessa.phone.net uttered these wise words...
> Unfortunately, there are people using lesser platforms that don't have
> or only recently acquired these facilities, so they can't do that. :-)
That's exactly my point. If MS can do it, so can lots of other
presumably more talented people. Am I the only one who thinks that
this will be a big win? Actually, I think that's an understatement.
I'm predicting that it'll be a _massive_ win.
> And some people just like arguing about religious issues.
Alas. No wonder MS get ahead - they steamroller along, ignoring the
religious issues, and just _do it_. No wonder so many people feel a
need to slag them off. I'm one of them, BTW, so I'm criticising
myself! Was this what Richard P. Gabriel's "Lisp: Good News Bad News
How to Win Big" was about? Well, he didn't mention MS, but I guess
they're way of doing things is closer to "MIT" than "NJ".
<URL:http://www.ai.mit.edu/articles/good-news/good-news.html>
> > I don't see why MS and Windows developers - and users - should be the
> > only people to benefit from this fine idea.
>
> They aren't. Like I said, I (and a few million others) have had the
> benefit of this functionality for most of the last decade.
Has Guile been around for that long?
> It appears that Unix may get such a solution in the form of
> applications that support JVM as a scripting mechanism. This allows
> any language that can be used to produce JVM bytecodes to be used for
> scripting. There may be technical problems with this solution, but
> it's a start.
<sigh> Yet Another Language Specific Solution. Please note that
Activex isn't dependant on a single language. You don't have to use
JavaScript to appreciate ActiveX. It'll work with _any_ language
that's available as an ActiveX script engine.
I'm sure that something similar _could_ be done for Unix, but I've not
yet heard of it. Guile is close, but no cigar. Of course, if nobody
complains about using Scheme as the "VM", then there's no problem.
However, ActiveX Scripting doesn't use a VM. That could be a big
limitation, but the only working (note: I didn't say "workable")
alternative right now is the JVM, which apparently has a few
disadvantages for some languages. ActiveX Scripting doesn't suffer
like this, altho it is (currently) dependant on Wintel. The ideas
could be a lot more portable than the technology itself, which is why
I wonder if something similar could be done for other platforms.
Think it as introspection. ActiveX Scripting adds enough introspection
to allow the scripting language to be completely decoupled from the
app that uses it. That gives the developer and the user a lot of of
leaverage, and without sacrificing any performance, nor leaving any
room for language politics to get in the way of using it. Neither
Guile nor the JVM have that advantage, but perhaps this can change.
Meanwhile, MS steamroller ahead. Who can blame them? They set a goal,
they achieve it, and everyone else eats their dust. In the case of
Bill Gates' "Basic for scripting everywhere", I think that it took 10
something like years or more to achieve, but now it's here. It would
be naive to pretend that people won't exploit it, or that it won't big
a big win. It's such a simple idea, so only the "not invented here"
attitude can stop anyone else from using it.
Unfortunately, that's been an effective block to progress for many
years. (Who remembers ACE?) If technical superiority really does
count, then please forget the political crap and just _do it_. You can
argue all you like about which language is "best" _after_ you've saved
the world...
> If you're really interested, I started working on a TCP/IP solution
> for this kind of thing a while back. It got aborted by a corporate
> takeover, but I may still have the groundwork somewhere (if not, the
> critical parts are easy to recreate).
Good luck.
--
<URL:http://www.wildcard.demon.co.uk/> You can never browse enough
Martin Rodgers | Programmer and Information Broker | London, UK
Please note: my email address is gubbish.
|