On Apr 14, 12:59 am, Serge Boulay <[email protected]> wrote: > on Gavin's Blog he explains the "joined at the hip with xml". > > "So why a new language? Well, we've been designing and building frameworks > and libraries for Java for ten years, and we know its limitations > intimately. And we're frustrated. I'm not going to recap all the > frustrations here. (I've listed some of them in the first presentation.) But > I guess I should mention that the number one technical problem that we > simply can't solve to our satisfaction in Java - or in any other existing > JVM language - is the problem of defining user interfaces and structured > data using a typesafe, hierarchical syntax. Without a solution to this > problem, Java remains joined at the hip to XML. "
Allow me to read a little deeper into this than the silly XML comment. What I hear Gavin say, is how he lacks type-safe expression trees in Java. Gavin King comes from the Java ORM world where he has been trying to solve the ORM <-> OO impedance mismatch for years, first with Hibernate and later with Criteria API. However, this does not work... it's clumsy and untyped when compared to a more elegant solution founded on expression trees (lazy AST manipulation at runtime) and type inference, a la what Microsoft offers with LINQ. So yes, I'd agree that the notion of manipulating an AST declaratively would be hugely beneficial across the board, not only for UI aspects. One of the virtues of Fantom, is its support for tree based serialized types - which is close to tacking the same problem (though arguably not as type-safe). /Casper -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
