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I didn't have a chance to look at my mail all week (work and technical problems with my mail service), and just waded throught that long thread. I would like to share a rather insane idea I had some time ago concerning MediaWiki rewrite/different languages.
Setting database/filesystem/etc. storage issues aside, we basically want * a nice fast parser, maybe in C++ * a MediaWiki that runs on most platforms, which likely would mean PHP * keep the work we put in the current version
These points are somehow excluding each other :-)
But, we could have *some* of it if we had a way to automatically convert PHP to, say, C++. As far as I know, there is no such thing, and even if it were, it would either break on PHP things like "$a=$$b", or become slow again.
But, what about some "Über-language"? A rather abstract code that can be automatically converted to C++, PHP, Python, Java and-what-not.
That would * solve the speed problem * give a PHP version to the poor souls who need it * give everyone else nice C++ and Java classes, Python modules, etc. * keep them all in sync with each new version
The slight problem is, I'm not sure such a language exists :-(
Also, it it would exists, I am aware that it would not generate the most efficient code around. But, the generated code doesn't need to be human-readable, and I believe a PHP version would do for small sites (internal wikis, for example), while the larger sites surely can find a way to get the C++ version running.
Does anyone have information about such a really-high-level language?
Magnus