Re: Code generation or forms?

Hey Stefan,

On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 08:18:37PM +0200, Stefan Tilkov wrote:
> Why would this be in any way different? Whether you generate code at  
> development time or interpret it at runtime shouldn't make a  
> difference. The more information the description contains, the more  
> meaningful you can interpret it or generate code from it.

I've gone back and forth on this issue for a while.  What I think my
biggest concern boils down to is that there's a lot of, for example,
existing HTTP libraries which are very mature, stable, and highly
optimized.  If a description language came along which included
information targetted for code generation which overlapped in scope
with code already within these libraries, then they will be
incompatible, and the library in need of change to support the
description language.  Not a good thing ... unless you're an ISV trying
to reduce competition with open source alternatives by decommoditizing
this part of the stack, I guess 8-).

That's not to say I'm against supporting code generation entirely, only
that I think each proposed feature will need to be examined closely from
this POV.

If I had my way though, we'd be starting out from the assumption that
all information in the language is for runtime consumption.  In fact, I
wonder why that isn't the default position of this group, since the Web
currently works just fine in this manner, and I know from experience
that you don't need a description language(*) to develop very large
(international scale) machine-to-machine solutions.

 (*) you do need a forms language though

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.          http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies   http://www.coactus.com

Received on Thursday, 2 June 2005 19:11:19 UTC