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

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:18 AM, stevertigo<stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 1:56 AM, Steve Bennett<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Erm, the MediaWiki template language survives because it has a
>> monopoly. There is no alternative. It doesn't really matter how bad it
>> is - there is nothing users could switch to.
>
> The word "monopoly" implies unfair business practices such that make
> an inferior product the exceedingly market-dominant one. Putting aside
> its basic inapplicability in an open-source context, and the fact that
> in that context people will make free choices to use a tool, and not
> to mention participate in that tools' further development..  what is
> the argument?

Sorry to offend you. The claim made was that users continued to use
the MediaWiki template language because it was "good enough". I say
users continue to use it because there is no alternative. If you
wanted to make templates in Wikipedia, you'd write them in BrainFuck*
if that was the only language available.

Steve
* With a tip of the hat to David G. I've never written BrainFuck, but
I have written a fungeoid interpreter...