[Wheat-developer] Another programming language for the web...

[Mark L. <ma...@gl...>]

Philip Wadler, a C.S. Professor at University of Edinburgh, is 
currently researching Links, "a programming language for web 
application development, building on my experience with XML, Java, and 
Haskell"  The idea is that if functional programming can prove its 
worth in this arena, then that will give it the leg up to dominate the 
future of C.S. ... or some such...
	see: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/

Most recently, he held a one day conference and invited all the big 
functional big-wigs (not to mention the guys behind BigWig) to come 
talk.  Their sildes are now available here:
	http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/linksetaps/

I read all the non-powerpoint ones (sorry Peyton Johns of Microsoft 
Research -- see, proprietary systems are antithetical to an open 
exchange of ideas!)  Of interest are the langauge Scala, and JWig / 
Xact 's XML composition system.  It bears close conceptual kinship with 
our template system.

I don't think these guys have it.  They are a little too wrapped up in 
bolstering functional programming and strong typing to think about how 
to actually help the problems of internet programming.  But, I'm sure 
we can learn a thing or two or three from them.

	- Mark