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

[Ian Woollard]

On 03/07/2009, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

Maybe, although if there's particular bottlenecks, you're usually
better off just optimising those; hardcoding a few common templates in
some non user accessible language is likely to be a lot less work than
an entirely new programming language. Actually there doubtless are
already multiple languages available.

> 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.

The other way to go is just to optimise the heck out of the existing
template system, with enough caching and hashing or run time
compilation most things run quickly enough. Still, doing this is
usually complex.

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

Yup. Conspiracy theories and programming languages. Both can be fun.

> --
> geni

-- 
-Ian Woollard

"All the world's a stage... but you'll grow out of it eventually."