Lasso (programming language)

imperative: procedural, concurrent, exp-oriented,Lasso is an application server and server management interface used to develop internet applications and is a general-purpose, high-level programming language. Originally a web datasource connection tool, for Filemaker and later included in Apple Computer's FileMaker 4.0 and Claris Homepage as CDML, it has since evolved into a complex language used to develop and serve large-scale internet applications and web pages. Lasso is an application server and server management interface used to develop internet applications and is a general-purpose, high-level programming language. Originally a web datasource connection tool, for Filemaker and later included in Apple Computer's FileMaker 4.0 and Claris Homepage as CDML, it has since evolved into a complex language used to develop and serve large-scale internet applications and web pages. Lasso includes a simple template system allowing code to control generation of HTML and other content types. Lasso is object-oriented and every value is an object. It also supports procedural programming through unbound methods. The language uses traits and multiple dispatch extensively. Lasso has a dynamic type system, where objects can be loaded and augmented at runtime, automatic memory management, a comprehensive standard library, and three compiling methodologies: dynamic (comparable to PHP-Python), just-in-time compilation (comparable to Java or .NET Framework), and pre-compiled (comparable to C). Lasso also supports Query Expressions, allowing elements within arrays and other types of sequences to be iterated, filtered, and manipulated using a natural language syntax similar to SQL.Lasso includes full Unicode character support in the standard string object, allowing it to serve and support multi-byte characters such as Japanese and Swedish, and supports transparent UTF-8 conversion when writing string data to the network or file system. Lasso is often used as a scripting language, and also used in a wide range of non-scripting contexts. Lasso code can be packaged into standalone executable programs called 'LassoApps', in which folder structures are compiled into single files. The Lasso Server application server runs as a system service and receives requests from the web server through FastCGI. It then hands the request off to the appropriate Lasso Instance, which formulates the response. Multiple individual instances are supported, allowing one server to handle multiple sites, each as separate processes. The server uses a high performance IO-based green threading system designed for multi-core systems. Lasso can be compared to the server-side scripting languages PHP and Python, ColdFusion, Ruby, etc. Free for development, Lasso allows partial access to its source code, allowing developers to add or change major components of the language (for example, Ke Carlton's DS implementation of the Lasso Inline). Licensing comes in both SAS and stand-alone versions. Lasso began in the mid-1990s when early web developers were attempting to connect Apple's FileMaker Pro database with the World Wide Web. On the Mac platform, there were two solutions: Eric Bickford's WEB-FM, and Russell Owens' FileMaker CGI (ROFM), both built in AppleScript and requiring the use of FileMaker Pro calculation fields for formatting. (WEB-FM was subsequently rewritten in C). In the Fall of 1995, developer Vince Bonafonti wrote a new CGI based on ROFM, using C/C++ for improved performance, and using the notion of HTML-based 'templates' instead of relying on calculation fields. This proved very popular in the FileMaker community, and was brought to the attention of Bill Doerrfeld, owner of Blue World Communications Inc., a print and website development firm based out of Issaquah, Washington, who bought the source code.