> I looked on the Rhino code, and also spoke with Christopher Oliver > (Rhino serialization) and Norris Boyd (Rhino main developer) about > continuations support in Rhino.
You *have* been busy :) <snip content="full continuations are out"/> While I agree with your conclusions, I have to admit that I'm now starting to get a little confused about the key points of the flow language. Going from Stefano's recent posting to the cocoon-users group... > The flowmap syntax, unlike the sitemap where the XML syntax is a perfect > choice for its intrinsic declarativity, will use a > programming-language-like syntax since a flow is much more similar to a > program and will normally be written and managed by programmers which > are used to more 'procedural' approaches. > > The flowmap will also be transparently stateful: writing a web > application that creates the sum of two numbers will be as easy as doing > > var a = getA(); > var b = getB(); > c = a + b; > show(c); > > the underlying implementation will allow Cocoon to know 'where you left > out' the execution of your program and restart from there. Transparently stateful is one thing. Full support for continuations is another. From the Rhino code links already mentioned in this thread, it should be fairly straightforward to "allow Cocoon to know 'where you left out' the execution of your program and restart from there." This isn't the same as continuations, but it does accomplish what Stefano describes. I guess what I'm wondering is whether, for someone trained in standard procedural programming, full support for continuations really offers all that much? Is the goal to change how these developers approach their problems, or is it to allow them to use the same languages they already know with transparent support for "stateful execution"? Near as I can tell, the really big thing, other than transparent states, will be the abilities to call a Cocoon pipeline for output and to construct pipelines on the fly. <-- deliberate Functionality Syndrome provocation, but let's be honest... it *will* happen regardless of whether we use Rhino or FlowScript. I'm not trying to take anything away from continuation-style programming, Scheme, or any other language. I'd actually like to learn about this stuff. What I'm wondering is whether we are pursuing purity at the expense of maintainability and comprehension? Regardless, I can't wait to try out the end result. Take that WebObjects! Jason Foster --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
