Here's an idea for a project (maybe for a motivated undergrad?): a Racket sub-language that, like Node.js:
- restricts you to only non-blocking I/O - restricts you not to have access to Racket threads - uses the control-flow model of JS where a single event loop invokes only one user callback at a time - provides Node.js-like API's but *also* uses send/suspend and friends to allow writing event handlers in direct style. That's something JS just can't do, since it doesn't have first-class continuations. An even more ambitious student might even play with doing this in a variant of Typed Racket with an effect system, where you distinguish functions that might suspend their continuation from functions that won't, as well as effect-polymorphic higher-order functions such as map and for-each. This would make it possible to write expressive server programs where it's nonetheless still statically detectable where all the possible points of pre-emption are. This makes it easier to reason about shared state, since only calling suspendable functions can trigger a pre-emption. IOW: JS control-flow model + send/suspend + Typed Racket + "suspendability" effect. Dave On Jan 14, 2011, at 9:40 AM, Neil Van Dyke wrote: > Eli Barzilay wrote at 01/14/2011 09:21 AM: >> >> 9 hours ago, David Nolen wrote: >> >>> With a good FFI it seems like someone could write a great Racket DSL for >>> evented network programming a la Node.js minus all the JS callback cruft. >>> >> >> I know very little about it, but it looks like it covers stuff that racket >> includes as built in functionality. >> > > Yeah, I don't know Node.js, but most of "http://nodejs.org/api.html"; looks > like ways to make JavaScript more easily do things that Racket already does > better than Node.js does. > > Regarding event-driven API like I see in the documentation for Node.js > "net.Server" documentation, you could implement that in pure Racket pretty > easily, without needing FFI. > > I've done some fairly high-performance I/O for TCP and interactive subprocess > pipes in pure Racket. Racket's own event conception, buffer operations, and > multithreading have been up to the task. Of course, Racket certainly lets > you implement simpler abstractions like Node.js's atop this. You can even > make Racket special-syntax like > "define-Node.js-like-server-and-with-some-static-checking". :) > > -- > http://www.neilvandyke.org/ > _________________________________________________ > For list-related administrative tasks: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
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