Moto (programming language)

Moto is an open source server-side programming language much like PHP or JSP, developed by David Hakim. The primary difference between Moto and server-side scripting languages is that Moto pages can run interpreted (like PHP) or be natively compiled into dynamically loadable Apache modules (an entire Web site could be compiled into one .so file). Moto has a type checking phase so programmers see more errors up front. Programmers can define classes and functions in moto and make use of powerful exception handling.

Moto comes with a full suite of objects and functions for state and session management, MySQL and PostgreSQL database connectivity, and a large variety of utility classes. There is also an included interface definition language for exposing C functions to Moto. All object allocation occurs in a shared memory segment, so maintaining objects in memory between page views is a snap.

Technologies

*Native CompilationWhen building a public Web Site or Web Application , the ability to deliver page views quickly and cheaply matters a great deal. Web applications should be designed to be distributed among multiple servers. But one System Administrator can only manage so many different machines. Thus the speed at which one machine can deliver page views matters.

*Shared Memory Management All web application developers grapple with the question of how to maintain state between page views. Many paradigms exist for the passing of small name value pairs from page to page via the query string or HTML Form submissions. But often one must maintain complex data over multiple page views, such as the contents of a shopping cart, or changes to a Personal Homepage. The best way to maintain such data is in objects.

*Type Checking and Syntax Verification There are three important features that may turn off developers coming to moto from other embedded scripting languages. The necessity of these features is well understood to experienced C or Java developers but is often misunderstood or considered a hassle to many who come from the world of embedded scripting commonplace in web development.