X# - XML Oriented programming language

http://www.xsharp.org/samples/

by axod • 18 years ago

21 50 18 years ago

sidsavara• 18 years ago

Not for me, but still voting it up because I was curious enough to click the link =P

It is exactly as sharp and pointy as I had feared - but then again, XML was never meant to be looked at by humans right? Isn't the point that it's easy to traverse and build tools around?

An XML based language would definitely aid in creating more visual IDEs. I suspect the example they give could be done easily in Yahoo pipes, and is likewise stored in a similar XML document.

michaelneale• 18 years ago

>but then again, XML was never meant to be looked at by humans right?

Actually I think it was, in as far as it is a text markup language. The only case when I have enjoyed looking at it, and editing is docbook - where its mostly text, just with limited docbook XML markup (and having the redundant closing tags does help you navigate).

newt0311• 18 years ago

I personally prefer docbook SGML. Its much more forgiving when it comes to end tags which can be inferred. Also, sometimes the case insensitivity is nice.

axod• 18 years ago

Thing is, it's not easy to traverse and build tools around...

You can write a json encoder/decoder in a few lines of code. XML libraries run to a fair few lines and are pretty complex beasts.

sqs• 18 years ago

This is hilarious. Maybe it's an improvement over their previous product, a CSV-oriented programming language.

dennmart• 18 years ago

This would've been damn cool - If we were still in the year 2000 or so, when XML was all the rage.

I'm sure people will find lots of uses for this, though.

kschrader• 18 years ago

No, it would have sucked then too.

felideon• 18 years ago

A fully working e-mail auto-responder using only two statements...

and 28 lines of code.

cschep• 18 years ago

This reminds me a lot of ColdFusion. It seems like the purpose is to make it easier for non-programmers to embed code into a web page. The syntax is just mind numbing though.

It made easy problems manageable for a noob, and hard problems impossible (to stand working on) for anyone that enjoys programming.

This doesn't seem like a good evolution.

perezd• 18 years ago

I agree, its like ColdFusion...only it validates.

arockwell• 18 years ago

I pray this is someone's cruel joke. You just wouldn't write code is poetry at the bottom of every page for an xml programming language unless this was a joke.

Also, it runs on the JVM, but is called X#. I mean... I'm honestly speechless.

jeroen• 18 years ago

Doesn't Java have its own "cool" symbol? Anything -# or Iron- implies a relation to .NET, and I see little value in creating confusion around that.

cabalamat2• 18 years ago

Maybe they should call it JXML. Though this name is a bit bland and could be spiced up with a liberal sprinkling of exclamation marks: J!XML!

When Microsoft bring out their implementation it will be called "Visual Studio Active Team System IronXML# Server Pro Ultimate".

haasted• 18 years ago

Reminds me of a panel-discussion I was in the audience of once. When panel-participant Steve Vinoski was asked which trends he saw for software development 10 years in the future, his only response was "I just hope we're not all programming in XML".

Having done my share of XSLT, I could not agree more. :)

russell• 18 years ago

Lord no! Think of the children!

I am all for DSL's because you can do some very neat things with them, but don't make it XML based. Use a reasonable language like Python (replace with your favorite language). XML is pretty hard to read. A good programming language should be concise. You can type only so many symbols per hour; make the most of it. I worked with VoiceXML a decade back. It was not a pleasant experience.

The seductive attraction of an XML based language is that the heavy lifting of writing a parser is done for you. That's just an illusion. There is most certainly a grammar for any language that you like. With a little bit of hacking you are in business. I've done it. It's a piece of cake, more fun than banging away at a DOM tree.

burke• 18 years ago

I love the footer: "Code is Poetry". Eugh.

justindz• 18 years ago

As a poet and programmer, my first response was to be offended. But, then I remembered all the poetry I read on Facebook earlier today and kind of thought "eh, yeah, I can see that now."

whalesalad• 18 years ago

Obsurd. With an O.

moonpolysoft• 18 years ago

Why is their logo an M&M?

arjungmenon• 18 years ago

Because M&M is a tasty chocolate that is especially popular with children, the creators of X# want to send the message that their language is delicious toy suited for tots.

silvajoao• 18 years ago

pavelludiq• 18 years ago

   <!-- SQUARE function -->  
   <xsp:variable name="square" type="node">  
       <xsp:processing-instruction>  
           <xsp:text value="{node() * node()}"/>  
       </xsp:processing-instruction>  
   </xsp:variable>

This is a one-liner in python and you can guess what it does without knowing python.

eru2• 18 years ago

And in Forth: : square dup * ;

gojomo2• 18 years ago

Reminds me of my idea for an XML image format:

  <image>
   <pixel x="0" y="0" red="255" green="255" blue="0" alpha="0"/>
   <!-- etc -->
   <pixel x="1023" y="767" red="0" green="0" blue="0" alpha="0"/>
  </image>

I think it would gzip pretty well.

ComputerGuru2• 18 years ago

That's the BMP spec you're describing right there, except with ASCII bloat. So, no thanks.

TweedHeads2• 18 years ago

It is called XBMP and it is the latest in image formats for the web /s

oconnor0• 18 years ago

Not bad, but I think you forgot to include document unique identifiers on each important tag. Also, where are the namespaces? You need to be able to embed this image in a document without having tag name collisions.

gojomo2• 18 years ago

Good point on the namespaces. But I'm an idea guy -- the standards committee can work out the details.

darthtrevino3• 18 years ago

The big difference is that your image format is data, which is what XML was meant for.

nailer• 18 years ago

XML was meant for structured data. A picture is not structured.

geuis2• 18 years ago

Oh lord, my company is a java shop. Some asshat is going to hear about this and want to implement it right away. God help us all....

codeglide3• 18 years ago

My name is Mark Giuliani and I am one of the developers behind X#.

I do agree that the language is verbose at the moment, originally it was designed to be programmed visually but we kept extending it to the level where it is now. In less than 3 months we are releasing a new version of X# that will include a C-like or Java-like syntax. So in addition to doing > you would do if( expr ) { ... }.

For those who think X# is a joke, please take a look at http://www.snapcrm.com which is a CRM and Collaboration Suite far superior to all open source CRMs and it was coded entirely using X# in 4 months. Also, take a look at Fusion (http://fusion.codeglide.com) which is a Data Integration Platform superior to anything available in the market today -- coded in 5 months.

Try doing this in other languages!

ComputerGuru2• 18 years ago

I'm sorry, Mark, but there's a ton of open-source CRM software written over the weekend and published in a matter of days.

As a matter of fact, if you'll go through the backlogs here at Hacker News you'll see a large number of "Game/Site/Tool/Language Written, Released in 3 days!" stories by members of this very community... in languages from C# to Lisp to Java to C and even ASM.

codeglide3• 18 years ago

I agree, but they don't have the number of features that we have.

rw• 18 years ago

> "[...] take a look at http://www.snapcrm.com which is a CRM and Collaboration Suite far superior to all open source CRMs and it was coded entirely using X# in 4 months."

How about that hubris, then?

evdawg• 18 years ago

Bah! 5 months? Rails has an acts_as_crm plugin, I could've been done in 5 seconds. Next! :P

jefffoster• 18 years ago

And the power doesn't stop there, with XSLT you have a powerful macro system too!

cabalamat2• 18 years ago

Good point. Hey, aren't Lisp s-expressions just a less powerful form of XML nested structures? I think Lisp should be re-written in XML. So this:

   (defun factorial (n)
      (return (if (< n 2) 1
                  (factorial (-1 n)))))

Would become:

   <!DOCTYPE xmllisp>
   <program>
      <function name="factorial">
         <parameters>n</parameters>
         <return>
            <if><condition>n &lt 2</condition>
               <iftrue>1</iftrue>
               <iffalse>
                  <functionCall name="factorial">n - 1</functionCall>
               </iffalse>
            </if>
         </return>
      </function>
   </program>

Which I think we can all agree makes much more sense.

darthtrevino3• 18 years ago

XML is like violence; If it doesn’t solve all your problems, you’re not using enough of it

TweedHeads2• 18 years ago

Haven't heard of Don Box in a looong time. What's he cooking now?

darthtrevino3• 18 years ago

So that's where it came from! My co-worker had it posted on his cube and I thought it was great

geuis2• 18 years ago

My roommate is saying this is a prank that's been going on for a few years. Not sure if this is for real or not.

daleharvey2• 18 years ago

It is somewhat disheartening to see the reaction the release of this has had.

It isnt lisp or erlang or anything "cool", from a glance at the code its a souped up xslt or templating language. The code is obviously supposed to be tool generated (how many graphically driven lisp generators are there?), yes they could use s-exps, but if you dont need the power of s-exps, whats the point? Java has a nice xml parser in built.

But the main point is that there demo looks pretty comprehensive, if it was written in 4 months then cool, it sounds like it done the job they needed it to do pretty well.

Can any of the detractors point to as comprehensive web application written in lisp / erlang etc?, it's obvious they arent worried about algorithmic complexity and "hacker cred", and more about the integration tools and free extras that come with having xml as an intermediary language, and shock horror, getting things done.

They didn't need to release this, seems like they just put out an internal tool that was useful to them so that others could benefit, and they end up getting treated like the star wars kid.

jamongkad2• 18 years ago

Normally I would be inclined to agree with you. But judging from the OP's comments on proggit and here. You can see a smack of arrogance around his posts.

daleharvey2• 18 years ago

true, but I think I would be getting defensive after a witch hunt like this

zaius• 18 years ago

Wow.. There's a lot of hate going on here. If you don't like it, don't use it. I would have thought that the HN community would appreciate this solely for the novelty factor.

IsaacSchlueter• 18 years ago

First of all, a lot of the comments here, imo, are not so great, for they miss the meat of the matter. It's easy to poopoo a language because it's different, or verbose. Hacker News hates XML, worships s-expressions, and has some mixed fondness for maps and json, so the anti-XML snark is expected, I suppose. But let's put that aside talk about why X# is actually distasteful. That might even be helpful to the developers and incite more than defensiveness on their part.

Disclaimer: I'm not an X# expert. I've just read the pages linked to from the sidebar on http://xsharp.org. This review may well be a failure of marketing more than anything else.

When I saw the title, I was expecting something a bit like lisp, but with about 10x as many characters. Granted, xml done right is not just sexprs, so I was curious about how attributes might be used to add additional expressive power. Maybe, I thought, you could do something as "pure" as lisp, albeit with a much uglier syntax. It probably wouldn't be my thing, but it might be neat nonetheless.

Oh, if only.

The problem with X# is that it uses enough XML to be ugly, and yet not enough to be pure. If you were to use it, you still need to be thinking in a very ruby-like block syntax with stuff like processing-instruction and append-child and for-each and so on. (Nested with blocks? Srsly??)

The XML feels out of place, tacked on. Rather than use a consistent expression language to define programming language fundamentals, it seems like a sloppy addition to a kludgey language.

The examples seem to use some powerful built-ins, without telling me how I would actually apply the concepts to new ideas. What is the xml "schema" for an HTTP POST? For a CouchDB document? For a curl request to the Twitter API, or the results of it?

In other languages, it's generally very clear how a given bit of XML is turned into an object. However, it's not so clear here how a given bit of JSON (or other data) would be turned into XML, or vice versa. Compared with the facilities in ruby or php for handling any kind of data encoding syntax, I wouldn't even consider this. How do I dump out the data? What are the rules for converting non-XML to something that's XPath-able?

Take this example, for instance (comments added)

    <!-- start in curly-brace land, using builtin for-each and document functions,
         passing xpath query on the imap "document", which is not natively XML -->
    for-each document('imaps://imap.gmail.com?user=jkirk@gmail.com&pass=secret')/folder[@name='INBOX']/mail[@seen = 'false'] {
        append-child document('smtp://smtp.gmail.com') {  
            <!-- switch to XML to define the message.
                 Where do I look up the XML syntax for a message? I would not
                 have guessed that this would be the way to do it. -->
            <!-- Function call in the subject attribute? That's weird.
                 What if I wanted to email someone about curly braces and
                 concatenation functions? Would I have to escape the curly
                 braces that are escaping the function nested in my xml nested
                 in my code?  I think the "fail" stack just overflowed. -->
            <mail subject="{concat('RE: ', @subject)}" from="jkirk@gmail.com" to="{addresses/from/@address}">
                <!-- So, we're back to c-ish syntax now?  That is so strange.
                     Also, text must be quoted inside of XML?  I always thought
                     the primary (only) benefit of XML over sexprs or JSON is that
                     plain text doesn't have to be quoted or escaped. -->
                "Hi text ";  
                select addresses/from/@name;  
                ",\n\nI've received your message titled '";  
                text @subject;  
                "' and\nI will reply to it shortly.\n\n--James\n";  
            </mail>  
        }  
    }

Letting data and code mingle closely is an attractive premise, to be sure. XML is not the only data definition language, and many would argue that it's far from the best, but it's certainly a contestable point. In my view, it is not XML that turns me off from X#, but rather the overall lack of consistency and transparency in the language.

Also, about the footer and some general site tips… The mascot has <?X#?> on his chest, but the language doesn't use <? as far as I can tell. (Or does it? Jesus, please say it doesn't.) This code is not poetry. (The tumbleweeds in the forums and on the blog also do not inspire confidence.)

It would be better to start with the most elegant syntax possible, and work backwards from there to an implementation. As it is, with the market for programming languages and frameworks so full of robust and elegant solutions, I would not even consider using X# for anything whatsoever.

codeglide3• 18 years ago

Thank you for your comments. My replies follow,

- The syntax we have at xsharp.org is an alternative C-like syntax (which we are still working on BTW). The full XML way of coding X# can be seen at http://wiki.codeglide.com/X_Sharp/Examples.

- Rules to convert non-XML structures to XML are defined by the connectors. We've chosen an intuitive XML structure to represent non-XML data on these connectors. Of course you can't guess what is the structure an XML that represents an e-mail has to have, but this is the same in other programming languages, you need documentation or an IDE with inline help to find out how to do stuff. The most powerful feature of X# is that you can combine data from unlimited and different sources using XPath and that instead of using multiple functions all actions are abstracted behind common operations such as append, remove, select and update.

- Yes, <?xpath ?> is used on the XML syntax to select nodes.

Originally X# was going to be a language to create applications visually and we chose an XML syntax because each tag is represented by a visual element on screen. Since we are still working on the visual X# editor, we offer an alternate C-like syntax (which is not definitive).

Although X# is Turing complete, we are not proposing it as a general purpose programming language -- we know it has limitations, having this level of abstraction has trade offs. Of course if we need to write a 3D Adventure Game or a Web Server we will use another language, but for writing the web based applications we wrote it has proven to be extremely fast and useful.

--mark at X#

X# - XML Oriented programming language

Related Stories