Pliant Computing

Welcome to Pliant Computing

What is Pliant?

Pliant is a programming language and a full computing system. It provides a unified way to build high-performance programs, modern client-server desktop applications and Web2 websites.

Programming in Pliant relieves the programmer from interfacing between incompatible systems and allows him to concentrate on business logic from the first line of code.

Pliant is a dynamic compiler. That means that it compiles to binary code but has closures and "eval" like you find in scripting languages. Pliant programs work at the speed of C programs.

Pliant is a great language of choice for any of the following example applications: relational database engine, 3D game engine, GMail like web-app, peer-to-peer sharing network, kernel drivers, online web store.

For readers expecting a more technical introduction, please jump to
http://hc.fullpliant.org.

What's Inside?

Pliant provides:

Dynamic Compiler
OO Database Engine
Web Friendly GUI Library
DNS, SMTP, LPR, HTTP, VNC
Remote Text Editor
Remote File Browser
Desktop Client for non-web deployment (similar to Adobe AIR)

Session Management

Pliant web development system solves the session problem. All pliant user interface controls such as buttons, text boxes, and dropdowns hold a persistent connection to the server so that their values are known to the server as soon as user changes them. view session demo

Examples

Make Money

Several commercial websites have been written in Pliant

Pliant Philosophy

Learn the motivation for Pliant by reading the FAQ and philosophy pages.

Basic Idea for Web Development

The basic idea is to do all computation on the server and treat the web-browser as a graphical dumb terminal. All javascript event handling code is moved to the server, without sacrificing usability.

ovar Int x y
x := 1 ; y := 2
input "" x
text "+"
input "" y
text "="
section "sum"
  void
button "add"
  section_overwrite "sum"
    if x<>undefined and y<>undefined
      text string:(x + y)

+ =

Unlike Apache and other webservers which forget about a request as soon as they serve it, pliant ui engine creates an instance of all transient data for use by the webpage. In this example the data consists of "x" and "y" variables. This data stays active in memory on the server until the user leaves the page.

It is instructive to look at "Net" traffic in FireBug when you click the "add" button, and at the response data. As well, notice that a request to the server is sent as soon as you change the contents of an input field.

view more examples