Microsoft's New Programming Language, "M" 334
Anthony_Cargile writes "Microsoft announced Friday their new 'M' language, designed especially for building textual domain-specific languages and software models with XAML. Microsoft will also announce Quadrant, for building and viewing models visually, and a repository for storing and combining models using a SQL Server database. While some say the language is simply their 'D' language renamed to a further letter down the alphabet, the language is criticized for lack of a promised cross-platform function because of its ties to MS SQL server, which only runs on Windows."
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
It's almost the only thing the article mentions, you can't go more than three paragraphs before you get "MS sucks the tied D with MSSQL server". I would be interested in knowing what D is. Is there someone with a good article about M or D if that's what it is?
fanboy central here we come..
MUMPS ?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Seems to me there has been an M language for years, a descendant of MUMPS.
So what the heck is Microsoft trying to do here?
Re:That sound that you hear... (Score:5, Interesting)
The 360 game pad really is very nice, but the D-pad is horrid. They need to improve it.
All said, I think MS is a pretty good company that has a ton of promise. The problem is they need to be broken up. They're like Sony was a few years ago (things have improved, a little)... they have no direction.
MS already have enough of their own languages (VB.net and C#), as well as others coming soon (F#), a shell they're inventing (PowerShell / Monad). They have interesting research products but they don't tend to make it to consumers most of the time.
MS has too much money to throw at projects like this that probably aren't that necessary. Some products linger around for years without enough help (Windows XP), many are constantly delayed (Vista was, we'll see it again). If the Mac Business Unit didn't release something named Office, you'd never know it was related to the "real" Office because the release schedules are so incredibly far apart.
If MS were split into a few little companies (maybe all under one big umbrella company) that could really make 'em fight against each other to prove how good they are, I think they could seriously improve their image.
I don't think Microsoft will last in it's current form. Something will have to change. A major strategy shift, a giant re-org, a slice across the product line (was having 7 different versions of Vista really a good idea?). Something will happen.
Re:That sound that you hear... (Score:3, Interesting)
What have they done in the last 5 years that improved the personal computing world? World leaders they no longer are. The MS way of doing things is no longer the ONLY way to do things.
That is the main Microsoft strategy of dominating any field in the computer industry. With any established field in the computer industry, there are experienced veterans who will be reluctant to switch over to Microsoft products simple because Microsoft tells them to.
The solution is to create a "hive mind" culture where the collective experience of veterans are outnumbered by the vast number of entry-level graduates led by the Microsoft architectural teams. Then they can make the veterans appear out of date and take over the direction of the industry. The way to achieve this is to create a brand-new data format or language that graduates feel it is necessary to learn in order to find employment. So Microsoft has to keep pumping out all these "new" programming languages/API's.
Examples: C++ vs. Microsoft MFC / .NET
OpenGL vs. DirectX
Open Document Format vs. OOXML
Re:lame (Score:5, Interesting)
they are all pretty consistent across the board.
and who cares how many languages there are. each one fits a different purpose, whether they are small niches or big sweeping frameworks like Java, does it really bother you that someone, somewhere just went 'yes, this is perfect for me'?
Their technology may be stagnant (Score:3, Interesting)
But their revenue is still increasing, and they still have a stranglehold on the majority of the market.
The grand plan (Score:2, Interesting)
M - the M language .NET
I - Iron Python for
C - C#
R - R# coming soon...
O - O# coming soon...
S - Silverlight
O - O# see above
F - F# right here, right now
T - T# real soon now...
Domain modeling environments (Score:5, Interesting)
Oslo and M appear to be taking a page out of the research Charles Simonyi has been doing at Microsoft, before leading to develop and advanced form of the technology at his own company Intentional Software [intentsoft.com].
The basic idea here is that any bigger project can be made more maintainable and flexible at the same time, if the deveopers create a domain specific model for the given task, and let the end-users (for example accountants, drug store chemists, biologists, business owners) model the concrete behaviour of the application by manipulating that simplified and specialized language, often visually, the way an UML diagram or a spreadsheet works.
Unfortunately the linked article offers a little more than the usual "LOL, Microsoft sucks!" rant, which is somewhat expected from a blog where the iMac keyboard and iPhone are used as "design elements".
Anyway, I'd say this should be watched as it can mean model languages will finally enter mainstream, something that's been years in the making.
Related articles:
http://blogs.msdn.com/wenlong/archive/2008/09/07/net-4-0-wf-wcf-and-oslo.aspx [msdn.com]
"By mentioning model-driven programming, you will see a general modeling platform to be unveiled at PDC: Oslo. As Doug said, Oslo contains three simple things: a visual tool helps building models, a new textual DSL language helps defining models, and a relational repository that stores models. XAML represented workflows and services are special models in this domain. Check for more details in the postings from Doug and Don."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1430 [zdnet.com]
"'Schemas in the repository can be defined using this language, but they dont have to be,' Chappell said. Developers can still use any other tools with which theyd be comfortable to create schemas instead. Because the new language will generate SQL, and the repository can be accessed using standard SQL, no special languages will be required."
Re:That sound that you hear... (Score:3, Interesting)
Right. I'm thinking more of a XBox company, an Office company, a server company (Exchange, MS SQL, etc), maybe a Windows company (possibly two), software company (MS Trips, utility programs, etc), hardware (mice, keyboards, Zune, etc), 'net (Live mail, Live search...), whatever.
I can see a ton of benefits to this, the competition aspect is the one I'm thinking of as most important. That plus the sink or swim aspect. The Zune guys know that MS will continue to exist next year with or without them. They can do very little and be OK. If they were more on their own, they'd have to fight to survive. Being a big company can allow MS to take big risks, but they don't seem to do it. The riskiest thing I see they've done in quite a while was the new interface for Office (which is hit and miss).
I agree it won't happen, at least the way I describe. If it were to happen it will either be government intervention (which I think we've seen to be useless right now) or the company starts sinking and starts spinning off divisions.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been "already taken" multiple times, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(disambiguation)#Computing [wikipedia.org]
Re:lame (Score:5, Interesting)
It's no big deal, anytime that much new comes out in so many areas it takes a while to get them synced, but it's a little chaotic now.
Specifically; new GUI paradigm (XAML/WPF/Silverlight) and new Data Access (LINQ) - the standard collections don't have INotifyPropertyChange support across the board, SortedCollections are hit and miss, just in general I have found that interfaces needed for one new component is not well implemented for other new components. Like I said, just a bit of growing pains, but it needs attention.
But I'll agree it has nothing to do with a new language being introduced. I doubt if that will have any affect one way or the other.
Re:That sound that you hear... (Score:2, Interesting)
As for the rest of us, developer tools, language design, is one of the areas where Microsoft unquestionable excels.
Language design?? Wait. I don't seem to be able to recall when was the last time ms DEFINED a language PROPERLY so that someone could write a compiler for it. Perhaps you could enlighten me.
Re:That sound that you hear... (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't mean they suck. And actually I've worked a few places that use Sharepoint very well. It's a very nice tool when used for a simple purpose. A document and discussion site for a project.
Re:lame (Score:4, Interesting)
You hit on some, but don't forget that generics have been in since dotnet 2.0 and we STILL do not have generics for reflection, data-tables, or many other standard pieces of the API which still require the use of explicit casting.
Re:Actually, there already is a language called M (Score:3, Interesting)
Not being on my regular computer, I'm seeing ads today and the delicious irony is that Intersystems is paying for Cache' ads on this story (Cache' is the dominant commercial implementation of M used in about half the hospitals in the US).
I had heard Microsoft was going after the healthcare market but I didn't realize they were going to do it by exhausting Intersystems' ad budget on irrelevant stories.
Also not being on my regular computer I have no idea the keybinding for an accented e....
Re:lame (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah--because they are probably wrong.
They are wrong. The last thing we need is another programming language tied to a specific platform.
We then turn around and sell them to customers. Customers love the price, but then later realize that they must buy a server to run in on, a copy of Windows, a server to run SQL on, a copy of Microsoft SQL Server, licenses, licenses to allow 'anonymous' internet connections, copies of Microsoft Office 2007 to be able to read the reports it spits out in Word 2007 format, etc...
Exactly why we opted out of the whole Microsoft environment, at least on the server and desktop side of the house. We have a couple Windows clients floating around with the sales staff but those are laptops that came with it.
Instead of constantly serving the MS machine, we can focus on working. If we need capacity, we just stand it up. New servers go in for the cost of the hardware. I don't consider myself stubborn, just practical. I'd rather focus on work than spend time keeping up the MS all-singing, all-dancing, constantly changing development environment. All the time you spend keeping up on security patches, learning new languages, hunting through the knowledge base, re-writing stuff the new framework broke...it's just nuts. You'd be amazed how productive you can be when you strip all the MS process out of your environment.
Sybase and MS SQL Server Compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
"...the language is criticized for lack of a promised cross-platform function because of its ties to MS SQL server, which only runs on Windows..."
At one time Sybase and SQL Server used to be compatible. I would use MS SQL Server ODBC drivers to connect to Sybase running on *nix systems. I would also use the open source TDS software from http://www.freetds.org/ [freetds.org] software to allow *nix machines to pull data from SQL Server running on Windows machines. Granted MS and Sybase seem to have forked the TDS protocol which both databases use.