supermikenews

My views on software, programming, Linux, the Internet, government, taxation, working, and life.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Linux Needs An Alphalanguage


Linux needs an alphalanguage by which other scripted, OOP languages are hatched. What I mean is that Linux needs a simple-to-read Perl-like language that allows you to create new scripted programming languages. If you want to build the next Rubyesque or PHP-clone language, then fine. This thing can handle it.

And, if you at least know a little Perl, then you'll be at home working with this Perl-like alphalanguage to build other languages. (However, it won't have some the oddities of Perl, such as language shortcuts where you can write a completely unreadable program in the least amount of characters.)

Some may argue that you can't do that and make it cool, but that's not what I mean. I mean that it should be a framework that allows you to load the OOP language, parse it, and pass it to GCC calls. Then it should, right off the bat, come with sample modules that one could use for templates, doing things like strings, files, and shell I/O, but not in the most advanced form -- keep it really simple. From this, other C programmers can take the sample modules and make more advanced ones from it.

And who should write this? Why, I think one person comes to mind of all people. It should be Larry Wall. Not that I like Perl all the time, per se, but because he is such an adamant and vocal language [i]fanatic[/i] that has the know-how, the energy, and the netizen community connections to pull this off. And if not him, then one of his comrades like Randall Schwartz.

What would take this to another level is something like Microsoft's common language runtime, where if you build a module that helps one language, you can tack on a parse-module for your favorite language and immediately address this new module in it. For instance, if you come up with a super-cool RSS parsing module, you put it into the common runtime and within 30 days you could start seeing this available in all the various other languages made from this alphalanguage framework.

I hope the idea takes off. I think it could show revolutionary new ideas that could only benefit other languages. And may the best language win.

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