[9fans] web apps

[Christopher Nielsen <cnielsen@pobox.com>]

web apps are usually not my area of programming interest, but
i've had some thoughts kicking around in my head from recent
discussions on 9fans.

i've been reading about AJAX and the like, and some of the
architectural ideas seem good, e.g., pushing interface stuff
into the browser and updating requests for data asynchronously.
makes sense and makes for snappier web apps.

i am not a huge fan of xml, and i've avoided javascript as much
as possible. that said, web applications aren't going away. why
not develop something using a similar architecture to AJAX but
using technologies that have a more elegant approach, e.g.,
s-expr, limbo, Plan 9/inferno? limbo already supports both xml
and s-exprs. xml can be defined using s-exprs. Plan 9 & inferno
are both cleaner, more efficient OSs.

the first question that comes to mind is how do you replace
javascript? does it make sense to write a limbo interpreter
plugin for browsers? does it make sense to design a better
language and write a plugin for that? is there something else
entirely?

just some thoughts kicking around my brain. i wanted to see if
anyone had any thoughts or comments.

Chris

-- 
Christopher Nielsen
"They who can give up essential liberty for temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin