Re: Can Ada be hacked?

[Georg Bauhaus <rm-host.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de>]

On 3/1/11 7:20 PM, Pascal Obry wrote:
> Le 01/03/2011 19:13, Pascal Obry a �crit :
>> Le 01/03/2011 19:03, Hyman Rosen a �crit :
>>> On 3/1/2011 10:40 AM, Julian Leyh wrote:
>>>> Javascript is not necessary for browsing the web. At least not for
>>>> basic browsing. If you have that finished, you may consider adding
>>>> Javascript. Until then it should be lower priority.
>>>
>>> Necessary for whom? Unless you wish to restrict use of your browser
>>> to other Ada aficionados who will admire it for the source language
>>> in which it's written, I believe you would quickly discover that
>>> Javascript is, indeed, necessary. And you will discover what happens
>>> to developers who say "if we don't have it you don't need it".
>>
>> I fully agree with that. Without Javascript you cannot use a single Web
>> 2.0 (Ajax based) site on the Web.
>
> And to be able to support Ajax based web sites you need a full DOM implementation I think.
>

Indeed, anything currently being developed around HTML 5 and
Web 2.0 is no less than an operating system.  Not kidding.
Google is developing a Javascript compiler(*).  It should not
come as a surprise when sooner or later Google Chrome will have
a Javascript byte code interpreter and/or JIT compiler.

Also notice Google's Chrome/ium OS, Google TV, etc.

Plus, they have experimented with using Javascript as a target
language, using something more real (less poor man's Lisp) as
the source language.

I claim that an Ada attitude towards HTML 5/Web 2.0 is
not marketable.

Language importance?Google Chrome maps its tabs to processes.
That is one way of providing isolation and prevent cross site
scripting attacks.  No tasking needed.  And the problem needs
not be addressed by language design, or concurrency---which is
quite OK as long as you want everything of a modern web app
to live inside one tab, not two or more.  Or have co-operating
windows.   Apple is currently moving away from multiple windows.

MS is distributing Silverlight partly to enable extending
Javascript and HTML 5 with some .NET programmability,
specifically on Windows(TM) platforms, I think. In which ways
will a portable Ada thing assist those who want to profit
from things available with .NET?

WebSQL has been replaced with IndexDB by the browser software
makers committee.  IndexDB is a comparatively low level data
store that almost *requires* layers on top of it.  Since the
features are a little simpler than SQL, script kiddies will
like and defend it.  (Only to see that basic simplicity does
not remove the complexity of the storage problem.) I bet that
Microsoft LINQ will very soon be one of these layers.

Netscape Lisp (aka Javascript) was very much, I guess, a project
of enthusiastic, talented young students or grads. Very much ad hoc,
101% duct tape design.  But management could very quickly get
something out the door to .COM customers.

Do you really want to repeat this history in Ada?
A history that may soon be over?
Can you improve it?  Who will benefit?

The "junk HTML" enabling technologies such as early browser
software, <font> tags, excessively fault tolerant parsers,
etc. have made one huge company possible in the first place:
Google.
Google has learned how to newly create information from
every kind of content to be found, and sell ads, to be seen
and clicked by those who are lost in the large, unstructured
sea of unstructured human output, facilitated and encouraged
by the above "junk HTML" enabling technologies. Lost in the
sea of information Google helps to fathom only to the extent
that search results visiting time is part of what pays them.

An Ada attitude can only hinder this kind of success.

___
(*) Some Netscape officials have explained that Javascript
is really some Lisp (Object System) with a fashionable
syntax (for reasons of marketing), hence C's.  If you look at
the object model described in ECMA Script, you can see that
this is true.
As is to be expected from all languages built on
top of C/Unix, the fundamental type system of existing
Javascript implementations is fundamentally flawed.
Ruby is still reported to suffer from being based on int and
char without much consideration.
Javascript still has no 64bit integers, or 64bit shifting
operations.