New web language...?

Hello all,

I am a web developer with a good amount of experience in php, html, xml, javascript SQL, etc...etc... While working on my latest project a ajax based web app I have started to become frustrated with the "state of the art" to make a responsive web application. The issue that I am having is the number of languages I have to use to get that responsiveness and the the additional overhead that comes with.

So I started thinking about this and started looking for a solution to ease the load. One avenue is to select a framework based on php; considering my background. While the frameworks can improve my time to release certain types of web apps, namely blogs or flicker apps, I find I will still have to code most of the functionality I need plus in some cases I have to learn the framework. I am also am stuck with the same basic issue of multiple languages.

I can not help but feel that the real solution would have to be a new language designed to handle all aspects of web app development. On the client this would have to be a plug-in and an executable on the server. The language would handle content, presentation, interactivity, communication, security, validation and database access. This would replace html, CSS, javascript and the server side language of your choice.

Having thought on this a tad, I was wondering if anyone else feels the same way as I do? Is anyone else tired of hoping between multiple languages for a web app? Opinions? Suggestions?

I breathlessly await your beta. Well, not really.

Browsers are built to understand web standards like html, javascript, css and xml, this keeps things easy for ALL web scripting languages(ASP, PYTHON, PHP, JSP...) to communicate with ALL browsers. Should each different browser cater for every company's fully fledged web scripting language, browsers would just become too big and cluncky.
Secondly, whether you have two languages or one, you still need to code all the code yourself, and learn the server side and client side of the language(s).

There are some cool tools out there, like JQuery, that speeds up javascript development a whole lot.

and web browsers accept plug-ins to run additional code, like flash, acrobat, java, etc. Although I do not want a binary solution...a text language like javascript or php would be nice I think. At any rate, I do not believe that this is something that one company such control. It would be best placed in the open source community.

My gripe is having to keep track of which language I am in. This is mainly an issue with PHP and javascript. While having my editor open, one tab page has html code, another php, another css, and yet one more for javascript. Making an error in syntax is easy...it would seem to me that a single language to handle everything would greatly reduce errors and improve coding.

If my memory is correct SVG allows for interactivity of defined objects (buttons and such) that can handle page transformations. To bad there is nothing more on the server side and I would, most likely, not be pursuing this topic.

I am aware there are tools to improve the development of some code, but this does not address the issue of 4-5 languages needed for a ajax based application. If a framework is use you may then need to learn an additional language as well.

If we were developing a desktop app, would we use as many languages on a single app?

PHP is the server side code all the other stuff is client side which a universally recognized browser standard.

The way everyone bickers about the way browsers implement (or not) things like the marquee tag ... I can't wait to see the proposal to make all browsers recognize Q Flat as the single do it all hypertext/formatting/scripting language.



Or ASP, C#, css and javascript ... To be blunt I have no trouble whatsoever identifying which of these is which and I'm still pretty new at ASP.Net ...

Have you tried the Visual Studio IDE? Maybe what you need is a really kick-butt IDE ... ?

Well, desktop development often implies to know several languages: considering a server using Web Services, accessing a database, you may have to use:

- C/C++/Java/whatever for the server itself
- SQL
- WSDL, or at least XML for Web Services
- Makefile* - ok, you can spare it with an IDE, but still, you ought to know it.
- some scripting language (shell/python/perl/whatever): again yo
- your boss/customer language (eg. English) - Not necessarily the easiest to understand!

Life's hard.

So you're saying there are too many languages ... and your solution is to make a new language?!

No, he just wants to create one giant super language that does everthying!

come and expiernce the new Voltron language! Greater than the sum of its parts (which just happen to be stolen from everywhere!)

Are you suggesting a name? LOL

Yes I am thinking along the lines here, but I make no assumption as to my fitness to make said language. In the end this maybe little more than idle thoughts. But certainly a single language for web development could work...or no? Is this a pipe dream and every web developer is happy with the multi-language source?

BTW - the last issue that got me was between javascript and php

javascript
-----------
var myArray = new Array();

php did not like the new keyword
-------------------------------------
$myArray = new Array(); // error
$myArray = Array(); // fine

something like this was a simple mistake, do to hoping between languages in the project. While I fixed this error in code and began moving on. I really wonder if there is a better way...?

Good thing you didn't put DEFW 1024 in there.

Where there's hope there's a promise that spellcheck will catch everything. Alas, when you use a correct word incorrectly you fail. Twice in a row. Computer languages are less forgiving than human semantics. Many people will read this correctly as

due to hopping

This point is not trivial and directly refutes your thesis.

It would be a very hard thing to have one all encompassing programming language, everyone's into their own thing and tends to pick a language (or set of languages) that suits that thing. I work with a big long list of languages because certain clients refuse to use anything else, personally I think those languages are backwards, ancient and/or plain frustrating. For my own projects I use a totally different set of things.

In a way you could apply the same question to every day spoken and written langauge. Sure it would be easier if everyone spoke and wrote the same one but I don't see that happening in the near future and as far as most people think it probably hasn't happened in the past (read Snow Crash) :¬)