[WikiEN-l] MediaWiki is getting a new programming language

[geni]

2009/7/3 Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 4:28 PM, Apoc 2400<apoc2400 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The current template code is ugly, but it does work.
>
> It uses up an enormous amount of CPU resources, and there have been
> some cases where it's spectacularly failed.  Complicated templates
> have been responsible for bringing down sites more than once.  If
> [[Michael Jackson]] had been written in simple wikitext with no
> templates, the rush to read it probably wouldn't have brought down
> Wikipedia, for instance -- it was only so severe because the page took
> many seconds to parse.
>
> There have been previous incidents too.  In one case I can't recall
> the specifics of, a sysadmin had to delete a template on eswiki after
> it crashed at least that site (I think also affecting other sites on
> the same cluster, can't recall).

And with the exception of the Jackson issue I understand those issues
have been fixed. The jackson issue is somewhat questionable if it can
be solved by a new code setup. Give people a new code setup and they
will find a way to do unexpected things with that to. Remember the
days when VFD made made a significant dent in server load?

Heh issue long predates wikipedia in any case. Back in the early 70s
Southampton university created SOFOR because standard FORTRAN didn't
compile fast enough.

> Not to mention, of course, that there are plenty of people (especially
> programmers) who would be happy to help out with some template coding
> -- but don't because the code is so horrifying.

Programmers are not who we are primarily interested in with regards to
template code. There are far fewer programmers than non programmers
and they are more in demand by open source groups.

It's far more important that our template code be accessible to non
programmers than it be something programmers like. It also needs to be
accessible within a wikipedia environment something a traditional
language is unlikely to be. Template code may look bad but in practice
it's fairly resistant to people copying and pasting then playing with
to get what they want.

>No one is suggesting that ParserFunctions will be disabled.  The new
>system will be added in parallel, and assuming it's really superior,
>it will replace ParserFunctions over time.

Questionable. Check out the templates on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Pinsent

Old code unless bot eliminated (msg:stub for example) tends not to die.

-- 
geni