This blog is about technology, programming, video games, books and other related topics. It is published by Mark Papadakis.

If you still have doubts about Javascript: becomingbeing the most popular programming languge, its probably because you are not exposed enough to the web-based Applications paradigm shift efffects.

Not only there seems to be more javascript code (in terms of sheer volume) out there, its also about the number of users using applications that are driven by it, most of them not really knowing, or wanting to know, what it is, but thats an entirely different story for someone to tell, again.

We are relying on 4 primary programming languages. C/C++ for backend 'stuff', PHP, Javascript and SGL for frontend/light-weight 'stuff'. Well, we do use bash scripting for _so_ much systems and operations 'stuff', some python and perl here and there, as well as some java and Flash/AS3 for more frontend 'stuff'.

SGL is our home-grown programming language, it stands for Switch Glue Language, Switch being the main framework/library everything - all services, tools, other libraries, etc - are based on. The idea is that we can use this language anywhere we want to script operations and 'glue' things(services, resources, operations, etc) together. Currently, its used for two major services.

Our frontend developers eventually have to learn, or at least get familiar with, all those three main frontend languages, PHP, Javascript, SGL. Interestingly enough, Javascript code output surpassed PHP output, in terms of volume, mostly because our apps got more functional, fancy, whatever cool bang you get from client-side logic on the browser -- I wouldn't know really, I don't know much about frontend development, our main frontend team do though and that's all that matters (partial unordered list: phaistonian, hatdi, sug, stelabouras).

Given that SGL has been long due for a rewrite ( the currenty language syntax and semantics ), I thought I put aside some time to rwrite it, this time around using Javascript language syntax and semantics so that, when its ready, we could replace PHP with SGL thus, effectively, switching from 3 frontend languages to just one. Our developers, current and future ones, would only need to learn a single language, which may be the greatest benefit to this shift, but it sure is not the only one.

This will be my third attempt to writing a programming language ( SGL being the second, PASTE was the first.. those were the days) and thanks to Javascript being a standard, its a 'simple' enough matter of writing an efficient enough VM that will run the emitted bytecode ( I am toying with the idea of being able to target PHP and other languages, eventually, generating - say, PHP code from SGL code and so on ).

So far the lexer, most of the parser and some parts of the VM are in place. Hopefully, there will be enough time and sustained motivation to keep this going (its a side project, so it can't really preempt current major Phaistos projects ) until its ready, perhaps by the end of the month.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication- Leonardo da Vinci

Tagged with: programming , phaistos networks
Published at Saturday, 1 August 2009 9:26 pm