A new programming language is being built at MIT, and it’s taking “the grunt work out of Web development.” Dubbed “Ur/Web,” the language is meant to make Web applications not only easier to write, but more secure. The language’s compiler — what’s responsible for creating executable code — automatically generates the corresponding XML code, JavaScript and database queries in the correct locations. What’s more, Ur/Web prohibits unauthorized access between page elements.
Building a moderately complex Web page requires understanding a whole stack of technologies, from HTML to JavaScript. Now a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has wrapped these technologies into a single language that could streamline development, speed up performance and better secure Web sites. The language, called Ur/Web, provides a way for developers to write pages as self-contained programs. It incorporates many of the most widely used Web technologies, freeing the developer from working with each language individually. “I think this is a language with potential broad applicability to reduce costs of Web development in many different settings,” said Ur/Web’s author, Adam Chlipala, an MIT computer science assistant professor. “It brings some well-ad understood software engineering advantages to aspects of the Web that have been handled in more ad hoc ways.”
