ReadingRoom

This article is a bit light, but has some quick code examples of this integration of XML as a native type into Java-(cough)-EcmaScript. For the specification see: E4X Homepage∞. It isn't the easiest reading spec, but it is very complete. The whole approach is very interesting and gives me some ideas about our own XmlInterchange.

An essay about what makes languages popular. While this was written as a justification for a new Lisp dialect, I think much of it applies to what we are doing here.

A well researched article on a few major ideas in the future of programming languages.

A short essay on performance, optimization, and why very high level languages are relevant.

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...

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. The sildes∞ are now available.

This is a web application environment written in Python. It shares many of the same outlooks on the problem as Wheat does. Of note is that it too has a template langauge that is fairly minimal and has no code in it. Rendered objects are also in a tree, though often the tree is created dynamically per request. There is now an on-line version of the Nevow manual∞.

This file system is a sort of radical, abstracted version of unix style file system. And it achieves this with better performance and more secure semantics than existing ones. It is very cool. There is some interesting possibly synergy here: Having Reiser4? object media, and creating a Reiser4? plugin to support Wheat style objects might be a powerful and efficient way to store Wheat object.
And, if that weren't enough, their prefix about open software is nicely written.
Also see, for example, http://lwn.net/Articles/82461/∞ . Although Reiser has done plenty of cool work, there are problems too. For example, it is hard to see how a system call named reiser4 is the best solution to anything. --JimKingdon

Larry Wall has been revealing his thoughts about the design of Perl 6 in this series of articles. While the minutiae of Perl syntax may make your head spin, Larry gives great insight into design process for languages.

An interesting language built on top of Java for building dynamic web sites. Many interesting ideas, including compile-time analysis of XHTML templates and template fragments to ensure valid XHTML at run-time. Also interesting are their older language bigwig∞, and their newer project Xact∞.