They lack a lot of features one has come to expect from modern web frameworks. Could be that some turn out to be unnecessary, but still. I think I have found good online references for learning the basics of Scheme, but for now, I still don't know if writing full blown web applications is really feasible.
Thanks - so brl is following the ASP style approach to html generation (mix code and HTML)? Similar to PHP and JSP?
I like that better than creating the whole HTML in S-Expressions, but at the moment I wonder if the best approach would not be the one I know from XMLC: just operate on the dom-tree of the web page, and then serialize the dom?
Where are good places on the web to discuss such things?
The subtle difference between JSP and BRL is that in JSP %>string<% becomes a statement that outputs the string to a web page, while in BRL ]string[ is simply a string expression. This makes the same handy syntax available for putting any static/dynamic elements together, whether in web pages, emails, or SQL. This would be hard to replicate in a non-sexpr language. Hacking is quick and easy, and centralizing similar code from individual pages is straightforward and natural. BRL doesn't stay messy as PHP tends to.
Other features of BRL could be implemented in a non-sexpr language. It just seems nobody cares to make languages truly suitable for database-driven web apps. PHP could have done something like define-input to solve their register_globals problem while retaining a lot of the convenience it had become famous for. A ResultSet object in any language could be extended to have a very useful subset of the functionality in BRL's sql-repeat.
Anyway, I'm not sure the best place for discussion. Most lispers and schemers don't seem interested in web development. Maybe you could discuss it here on news.yc.
It would be nice to have some "cookbooks" for typical applications in LISP or Scheme. Searching for "scheme web development" turns up just one or two hits, all very basic (like this one http://www.scheme.dk/blog/2007/08/introduction-to-web-develo...)
They lack a lot of features one has come to expect from modern web frameworks. Could be that some turn out to be unnecessary, but still. I think I have found good online references for learning the basics of Scheme, but for now, I still don't know if writing full blown web applications is really feasible.