Got to say that I'm quite intrigued by the web services tutorial that Dave Winer has posted and Dan Shafer has written so eloquently about.
But, and there has to be a but doesn't there, what kind of language is that? I'm a programmer (of sorts) by trade and the code is horrible, take a look;
on myFavoriteWeblogs (ctfavorites, pretext="<p>", posttext="</p>\r") { local (htmltext = "", ct = 0); while ct < ctfavorites { local (ix = random (1, sizeof (weblogsComData.favorites))); local (weblogname = nameof (weblogsComData.favorites [ix])); local (adrweblog = @weblogsComData.weblogs.[weblogname]); if defined (adrweblog^) { local (link = "<a href=\"" + adrweblog^.url + "">" + weblogname + "</a>"); htmltext = htmltext + pretext + link + posttext; ct++}}; return (htmltext)}
I have seen more attractive 'C' code. Dave, do yourself a favour and give us an easy to learn, read and use language. I'm biased, but Python beats the pants off that macro language. I believe it is a subset of UserTalk, which in turn was inspired by Algol but that really is no excuse.
I've bought Radio, I use it and I like it but there is no way I am going to write web services if they have to be coded in that fashion. It is possible to do the same things in numerous other tools which have much easier to use languages. So I say nice try, but no thanks.
Of course, a tech savvy person could probably include the ability to write Radio web services in other programming languages. Somehow I don't think I'll get round to it but you never know ...
4:42:46 PM
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