I've mentioned before, but I think we are living in a period of time where a bigger explosion of programming languages is occurring than at any time in the past four decades. Having lived through a number of the classic languages such as BASIC, Simula, Pascal, Lisp, Prolog, C, C++ and Java, I can understand why people are fascinated with developing new ones: whether it's compiled versus interpreted, procedural versus functional, languages optimised for web development or embedded devices, I don't believe we'll ever have a single language that's right for all developer requirements.This Polyglo...

The ECMA committee is working hard on designing the next version of JavaScript, also known as "Harmony". It is due by the end of next year and it is going to be the most comprehensive upgrade in the history of this language. Chrome and V8 are committed to pushing JavaScript forward and have already started implementing the new features. You can try some of them today in the latest dev channel release. Here’s a summary: Lexical scoping. Now "let" is the new "var" – traditional "var" declarations are complemented with "let" and "const". Both are properly block-scoped bindings, elimi...

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is specified in RFC 959, published in October 1985. The attempt in this specification is to satisfy the diverse needs of users of maxi-hosts, mini-hosts, personal workstations, and TACs, with a simple, and easily implemented protocol design.That's from the introduction. Does anyone here know what a TAC is? I don't. I had to look it up, since the acronym wasn't even expanded in the RFC. It took three tries in Google, and I finally found it in some obscure Cisco IOS manual -- it apparently stands for Terminal Access Control protocol. Whatever that means. . ...

Today we caught up with Andrei Alexandrescu for a “10 Question” interview. He is a Romanian born research engineer at Facebook living in the US, you can contact him on his website erdani.com or @incomputable.We will talk about some of the juicy stuff that going on at Facebook, so let’s get started.Hello Andrei, welcome on Server-Side Magazine.1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where and what do you work?Who am I? Ah, the coffee breath of one talking about himself. Well let me try. I’m a hacker living in the US, originally from Romania. In 2001 I wrot...

Of course I am only repeating what others are preaching about the recent rise of JavaScript.But I think the movement is significant and can't be overstated. And recent developments are really even making it more and more interesting.Nobody can deny hat JavaScript is the de facto programming language of Html5. Every other language trying to bolt itself onto Html5 looks like pure friction so far. And Html5 is looking upon a prospering future.Today we are used to some established JavaScript frameworks that make working with JavaScript more fun and productive. jQuery seems to emerge as the clear l...

Dave Winer: Why apps are not the future:The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web.Let’s set aside one thing right away. The browser is an app. Text editors, outliners, and web servers are apps. And, without them, there’s no web at all.Somebody has to write these things. That implies APIs and more tools that are also apps. It implies an entire ecosystem of apps that are absolutely vital to the web.I think Dave is...

Procotols, programming languages and operating systems all compete in a constantly evolving software ecosystem. Out of that ecosystem only a few technologies truly have staying power and survive over the long term. An example? How about Ethernet? It’s been a survivor over the last thirty years despite existing in a constantly changing landscape that’s been populated with many worthy competitors. Ethernet’s grasp has been so strong, there even an informal law, known as Metcalfe’s second law, that says “nev...

Admitting that may be career suicide, or possibly it will cost me dearly because 'software engineers' are raking in the big bucks these days, but the fact of the matter is that I'm a programmer. It's what I do best and it is the job title that I associate with most because it feels as though the biggest chunk of me will always be most likely to blurt that out when people ask me what my job is. That I like to program definitely helps.So instead of choosing some fancy title for what it is that I do because that might possibly make me a bit more money I chose to embrace it, and I have yet to regr...