RE: [DotGNU]About scripting: SilverScript

[James Mc Parlane]

I'm torn on this idea.

I think if you can take C# and make a scripting language ah-la PHP (in that
it has a familiar C like feel), then it would be a Good Thing.

I highly recommend that you chat to some web developers that have used perl,
ASP, JSP, PHP and Coldfusion  and get them to tell you what they love and
hate about them. Those 5 pretty much cover all the styles of web based
scripting languages from pure cgi-bin up to tag based. I would also suggest
you look as asp.net and its hybrid tag based system.

My 2c is.. Make sure you get session scoping and handling right the first
time. And it would be really nice if 'SilverScript' could run as interpreted
in dev mode and/or compiled in production mode etc.

But.... does the world need Yet Another 2nd Tier Scripting Language
(YA2TSL)?

I think this could all be done with what dot.gnu has now with some hooks
into the exiting runtime engine and a clever HTML 'preprocessor'. 

I don't think we really need to come up with a whole new scripting language,
but just a clever application of the existing runtime.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Minten [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 2:15 AM
> To: DotGNU Developers Mailing List
> Subject: [DotGNU]About scripting: SilverScript
> 
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've been doing some thinking on what would be the ideal scripting
> language for webservices. The main requirements I thought of were:
> 
> * Object-Orientedness
> * Strong typing (to avoid errors)
> * Clearness of what code does (no C irregularities)
> * Code readability
> * Simplicity
> * How easy it is to call C# code
> 
> I've run down a couple of scripting languages I know and put up why I
> think they all don't do:
> 
> *VBScript: it doesn't support strong typing
> 
> *JScript: it doesn't support strong typing
> 
> *Python: seems to meet all requirments, implementing the 
> callling of C#
> code would be a little tricky however
> 
> *Perl: due to the context dependent actions it's often not clear what
> the code does and it also makes perl a bit hard to learn 
> (there are few
> really strict rules)
> 
> *Lisp: not object-oriented so connecting to C# code is hard, 
> due to the
> lack of special characters the code is        hard to read 
> for anyone except a
> lisp programmer, this scares of newbies
> 
> There is also a 6th option: SilverScript (working name, I haven't been
> able to think of a better name yet :-). I went to my drawing board
> yesterday to draw up what a good scripting language would 
> need, I ended
> up drawing up a scripting language. I've attached the main design
> document of SilverScript to this message (the language still 
> needs a lot
> of work though, this is only a days work).
> 
> The main idea of SilverScript is a C#-like scripting language 
> that does
> not inherit the traditional C illogicalness. Also I threw in 
> my personal
> developers itch, changing program code while running. The result is a
> scripting language mostly similar to C# with a simplified 
> strong typing 
> variable system. SilverScript can almost all of the code in pnetlib
> (delegates may prove difficult, the rest will be easy) and can use
> code in any IL file, thus being a kind of IL scripting language.
> 
> IMHO SilverScript is the best option, what do you think about it?
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Peter
>