Let's develop simpler technology tree

[Shura Balaganov]

Just thought of posting it here, since "Job Discussion" forum attendees had not really much to say about this topic. Discussion about streamlining technologies started here. In short, it takes 10-12 so called "technologies" to build a semi-simple web site now. There should be 3: language A for front-end, language B for back-end and SQL for database access.
This one is very much related
Some good Chinese background, which applies to this topic, posted here by Map. I would have to add to this, that in this book author gives numerous examples where there's always another algorithm out there that can increase performance X times versus rewriting routines in Assembly (which only produces a marginal Y% increase).
Any brave souls out there who want to tackle this? Once we are done, and Microsoft and Sun are knocking on our door to buy this, I am offering an equal share of stock options to major contributors
Shura
[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: Shura Balaganov ]

[Mapraputa Is]

A while back a posted a proposal to use XML as a meta-language for managing fast-propagating technologies. I cannot find it now, most likely it was deleted with other early posts when JavaRanch run out of disk space
Cindy gave a link to it here, and it doesn't work
Basically, I noticed that a number of acronyms in current use reached the number of operators in a typical programming language (if not exceeded it already :roll: ) So I suggested to develop a meta-language, whose "building" blocks would be JSP, XSL, CSS etc. It should be a declarative language, so we could capitalize on XML syntax and tools that are abundant and ready for use
Imagine my amusement when a few days later somebody pointed me to AppML language! Or maybe I found it myself, I forgot Anyway, yet another proof that all great minds think the same!
[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Mark Spritzler]

Well they finally caught up to me. That was my idea 10 years ago. Oh Well, you snooze you lose.
However, I think they will still find out that on some end they will still need "Dll" type libraries to translate and display the "App" whether is is built into the browser on as a simple OS.
But you know what, I am going to start now and learn AppML. Thanks Map.
Wait I think I should register AppMLRanch.com . and I think I should stop editing this post, this is my fifth edit.
Mark
[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: Mark Spritzler ]

[Mapraputa Is]

I am thinking why do we have such a "richness" of technologies and cannot find a good answer... Particularly, I am currently reading Wrox's "XQuery" book and cannot stop thinking that there is something wrong when the same organization (W3C) develops two languages, XSLT and XQuery, that share mission - to query XML documents, yet each, mind, you, "suit better to some tasks". For example, filtering is said to be easier with XQuery and full-blown transformations with XSLT... Quote: "A developer may use XQuery processing engine to handle transformation tasks, but it frequently will be simpler to handle these by using XQuery only to retrieve data and to make suitable arrangements of documents as adequate input to an XSLT engine".
Why do we need to chain two high-level languages to perform one task? What really prevents us from combining the best of each in one language?