Social Scripting from IBM
Michael Geary | Sat, 2007-09-08 22:56
category
Here is a script from IBM’s new CoScripter, to update your Facebook status:
* go to "https://www.facebook.com"
* enter your "e-mail address" (e.g. tlau@tlau.org) into the "Email:" textbox* enter your password into the "Password:" textbox
* click the "Login" button* click the "Profile" link
* click the "Update your status..." link* enter your status into the status field
It reads just like the instructions you might write down for someone, but it’s an actual executable script. All the scripts are stored on a wiki so anyone can share and update them.
Very interesting… And definitely not your grandfather’s IBM.
Via Jon Udell.
An interesting find. It doesn’t surprise me that a site like FB would come up with something like this. When I first got into programming I thought that I could revolutionise it by creating a language similar to this, where literal instructions are used to perform actions. However I now know that this is not a good idea :P
Interestingly enough, it was IBM, not Facebook, that came up with this.
I’ve come up with some revolutionary (revolting?) languages too. I hope yours were better than mine!
Any thoughts on why it turned out to not be a good idea?
:P It’s deffinetly a great idea for sites such as FB. Like wiki it could help total coding novices to present things in a more presentable manner, rather than the Dreamweaver-esque mess you get on MyPosingSpace :P
I’m sure you could come up with some good ideas for a language from looking around this site, it seems you are pretty heavy into JS. I never actually created any langauges, just an idea of how people could produce code that was literal like this IBM one.
I don’t think programming languages like this one are a good idea because they would become huge if they were to be used in heavy apps. All good programming languages and some really bad ones to compress things to the bare essentials and let you build upon them. I don’t think this could be possible with the IBM one, its would have too many commands and I don’t see how they could be made objective. Although, I guess this language is intented for simple use like on wiki.