and you can expect no more in the way of the unexpected... just when you think that now all that’s left to do is get a little closer to the acronymic HTML cousins that you’ve always wanted to know better (XML, XHTML, CSS, whatever) ...along comes something completely different to wipe out those assumptions.
Come and meet Curl. On Tuesday, November 27, the NBMA will present Curl evangelist Steve Weikal and Curl’s Web Strategist Ron Mayer, along with the proverbial programmer-to-be-named-later (whom Weikal promises will be a “damn fine Curl hacker”) to bring you up to speed on this latest turn in the Internet revolution.
Curl is a brand spanking new programming language developed to supplant HTML as the underpinning of the Internet. Sit down. Breathe deeply. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that. Yes, Curl is new to the scene, launched this past March, though it’s been quietly in gestation for the last half-dozen years.
Perhaps too quietly. Since its release, Curl hasn’t gotten major word-of-mouth play in the left coast’s developers’ world. So the Curl evangelists have journeyed from Boston to bang the drum loudly. They’ve hit Silicon Valley and San Francisco, establishing a San Francisco office. Now it’s the North Bay’s turn.
The PR is slow in coming, but make no mistake, Curl has the pedigree to become the major player. In 1995, the Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) granted $15 million to the World Wide Web Consortium and MIT for research on the Web’s next-generation technology. Involved were Dr. Michael Dertouzos, director of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, Dr. Stephen Ward, an internationally recognized computer scientist, and Timothy Berners-Lee, daddy of the Web, developer of HTML and, currently, Director of the W3C.
The project allowed researchers to erase all preconceptions about the Web and imagine the perfect Web world.
Theory led to reality. In 1998, with Dertouzos, Ward, and Berners-Lee joining in, the well-financed, private Curl Corporation was formed. The child of that union is a content language that unifies text formatting, scripting, full object-oriented programming, and distributed computing into one integrated environment. It is platform independent and designed to fully interact with existing Web standards and technologies, including XML and SOAP, as well as easily integrate with key enterprise information systems.
The language features a complete debugging environment with breakpoints, a source editor, and API viewer that executes code in exactly the same manner in both browsers.
Versions are available for Windows 9x/Me, Windows NT/2000, Windows XP Mac OS X, and Linux. There is now a third party administrator for the open source code.
The basic theory is to write simple code and have it compiled client-side with a plug-in (a free download called Surge). Curl (whose source code is enclosed in curly brackets, hence the name) claims its technology can reduce written code by anywhere from 50 to 90 percent when compared to HTML.
Use of Curl is free to individuals, but commercial sites are charged based on downloaded bytes.
The Internet lay dormant for a long time before it blossomed into a cultural phenomenon, the hula-hoop of the late 90s. Its accessibility is due, in large part, to HTML. Understand that HTML was originally designed for physicists to exchange scientific papers, i.e., text only. Demands are now made on the system that were never anticipated.
Trying to meet the requisites of all users meant retrofitting programming languages not developed for the Web (C, C++, Java, Perl, or Python) as well as adding a patchwork of solutions (there are over 140 browser plug-ins).
Curl is not part of that patchwork. It starts over from the beginning. If it is to be successful, it needs to show a distinct advantage over the ever-changing status quo. On paper, Curl makes sense: comprehensive code and a clever way around the bandwidth problem. But superior technology does not necessarily always win out (says my good friend Mac).
Nevertheless, if you see large amounts of money thrown at really smart people to alleviate a huge technological pain, and these wizards come up with what they think is a nifty solution, it deserves some attention. This is ground floor stuff. It should be worth your time to investigate. Two high-level talkers and a hacker will try to show and tell all, top notch expertise that won’t come your way every day.
Check out Curl’s Web site and the free downloadables beforehand: www.curl.com.
Doors open at 6:30 pm and there’ll be complimentary non-alcoholic drinks to add to the conviviality.
