Eleven?

Rails
1

I was poking around in the Gentoo Linux repository yesterday, trying to
satisfy my curiosity about how many programming languages there are in
“common use” today. I found one called “Eleven” which is quite strangely
similar in intent to Rails. The home page is
http://eleven.sourceforge.net/.

Eleven is much simpler than Rails, and there are some interesting ideas
in it. To quote the web page:

"Eleven is a programming language for creating reliable, scalable web
applications. Applications are expressed in a high-level language with a
simple, C-like syntax, from which the Eleven compiler generates
complete, ready-to-run implementions in PHP or mod_perl.

“Eleven is designed for applications in which rapid development, high
performance, and stability are critical - but total control over the
look and feel is not (since Eleven generates most of the user interface
automatically). Good examples are online exams and surveys, electronic
voting, and business workflow applications.”

Do any of you have any experience with Eleven? It looks to me like Rails
can do everything Eleven does, but for a beginner trying to put
together a quick-and-dirty Intranet application, Eleven would be a good
bit simpler, especially if the implementor was not a Ruby programmer. Do
any of you see anything in Eleven that Rails can’t do easily?

–
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

2

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

applications. Applications are expressed in a high-level language with a
can do everything Eleven does, but for a beginner trying to put
together a quick-and-dirty Intranet application, Eleven would be a good
bit simpler, especially if the implementor was not a Ruby programmer. Do
any of you see anything in Eleven that Rails can’t do easily?

Seem to be a very interesting language. However, I think the MVC pattern
behind the Rails is far more superior that what Eleven have.

For example, this sub is copy from the ACME order entry example.

sub enterOrders ()
{
…

while (1)
{
customer = “”;
product = “”;
quantity = “”;

  display
    {
      object [position="header" class="birdseedHeader" element="img"

src=“http://eleven.sourceforge.net/image/birdseed-header.gif” alt=“ACME
Bird Seed order entry” width=“250” height=“64”] (“”);
print [position=“left”] (“Menu”, menu);
print (“Enter order:”);
edit ("Customer: ", customer);
edit ("Seed type: ", product);
edit ("Quantity: ", quantity);
}

  transient array order;
  order {'order_date'}  = now ();
  order {'customer_id'} = customer;
  order {'catalog_num'} = product;
  order {'quantity'}    = quantity;
  statesafe var status = orders.insert (order);

…
}

Seem to me that the display (view) and functionality (such as new order)
are
Mixed in the same sub. I don’t know the pattern Eleven used, but if you
allow to mixed Control functionality, and View together as in this
example.
I don’t think Eleven can handle a complex Web Application.

Oh, I don’t see any model too …

For short, Eleven may be good for a small WebApplication. Without MVC or
some from of Model, Control View saparation, I doubt that it could take
on
a complex web application.

Tom

3

Anocha Yimsiriwattana wrote:

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

Do any of you have any experience with Eleven? It looks to me like Rails
can do everything Eleven does, but for a beginner trying to put
together a quick-and-dirty Intranet application, Eleven would be a good
bit simpler, especially if the implementor was not a Ruby programmer. Do
any of you see anything in Eleven that Rails can’t do easily?

Seem to be a very interesting language. However, I think the MVC pattern
behind the Rails is far more superior that what Eleven have.

> For short, Eleven may be good for a small WebApplication. Without MVC or > some from of Model, Control View saparation, I doubt that it could take on > a complex web application.

I don’t know about that - view is separated out to style sheets, and the
Eleven language declares the controller actions quite nicely. There are
no inherent object facilities, but that doesn’t make it impossible to
use in a sensible way. To me, it looks a lot like scaffold generation
on steroids. In fact, it might be nice to see an Eleven generator for
Rails (or at least a target for Ruby). Since they’re already targetting
more than one language, there might be an easy way in. I just had a
quick once-over of the PHP generator (it’s in Scheme, which is
refreshing), and while the code it generates looks to be relatively
monoblocky, it’s certainly not complex. Either a Ruby port of the whole
shebang or a Rails target for the generator should be quite feasible…
I guess that’s another weekend’s playing for me at some point :slight_smile:

One thing I do like about it, and something that has cropped up as a
criticism of Rails in the past, is that Eleven makes flow of control
obvious, and multi-form data submission trivial. Tying together more
than one generated flow into a more complex application (if that’s
possible - it’s not immediately obvious) would seem to be an extremely
powerful way of defining web applications - at least as a starting point

  • and it would be very useful to have something like it available in
    Rails.