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Pliant -- Lisp and C merge
1 point by jazzanova 5641 days ago | 2 comments
Hi,

We got this language called Pliant that has similar features to Arc. Particularly macros, we call them meta-functions. We output not to byte-code, but compile to machine code. We have much much less brackets. Also figured out how to integrate perl interprter into the language.

We are at: http://fullpliant.org



1 point by evanrmurphy 5641 days ago | link

The basic idea is to do all computation on the server and treat the web-browser as a graphical dumb terminal. All javascript event handling code is moved to the server, without sacrificing usability.

What's the motivation for this? I'd say that the given addition example definitely sacrifices some usability because it takes so much longer to evaluate than if you had computed it in the browser. It also seems like this would make your web apps less scalable, since even the most trivial client-side scripts would consume server resources on a per-user basis. (And how would you do something like a JavaScript animation using this model?)

Sorry if this sounds hyper-criticial. I'm interested in better understanding what makes Pliant unique. (Much of your website reads like an advertisement though, which makes this difficult.)

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2 points by jazzanova 5641 days ago | link

The web front-end is just one of the libraries and it has its drawbacks.

The actual language can do whatever. The language docs are here:

http://hc.fullpliant.org

What makes it unique than most langages is meta-functions (macros) and compilation down to machine code.

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