John McDowall posts:
The problem is not the programming language but rather the infrastructure we have built. To create an application that takes a string as input through a web form and then stores it in persistently a developer must know a wide range of technologies. This is true no matter which particular approach they use. If I use Java it is HTML/JSP/Servlets/Java/JDBC/SQL at a minimum if I use another approach the stack is similar (HTML/PHP/CGI/Perl/DBI/SQL). The number of transformations the simple string goes through from the web page to the database is significant. The impedance mismatch comes from the need to translate amongst datatypes. If it is a real world problem with complex types the problem quickly becomes hard.
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While XML has its own set of issues it does reduce the impedence [sic] issue if an XML datastore is used. There are still several technologies in play but one data format. (XHTML/XSLT/XML/REST/XML-Store) - are we better off?
If you're interested in one XML-based framework/language end to end, check out the Water programming language. A SearchWebServices interview discussing Water and its approach to the multilanguage complexity issue and the Water approach is available. I've been following Mike Plusch and Water for awhile. It is definitely interesting technology. Question is, can it have an impact in a language saturated world?
7:25:31 AM 
