rob.rho.org.uk

I've just had my bi-monthly heart attack, when I stumble across something that seems to scoop my entire thesis, and spend the morning frantically chasing references to check that it doesn't. In this case, it was a fairly interesting article (linked to from this SlashDot thead) about "extensible programming", wherein instead of communicating data between components in terms of streams of characters, á la the Unix command line, we use something a little more structured, which at the moment translates as XML. He also brings in a lot of together other ideas, such as Scheme hygienic macros, in a view that's spookily similar to my own way of thinking. Worth a look.

(In case you're wondering, the thing that worried me thesis-wise was the fourth footnote, which alludes to the fact that .NET makes translation between source languages "almost possible" via common intermediate form. I've checked, and I can't find anything suggesting that anyone actually does this with .NET. If you're reading this, and know of someone who does, then please let me know.)