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NAPL Not Another Programming Language

What is it?

Not Another Programming Language (NAPL) is a simple, high level domain specific language for defining pure functions, with a platform independant binary format for sending functions between systems. NAPL is not and does not attempt to be a general purpose programming language - it is intended to be used where business logic needs to be communicated between multiple systems, possibly running on different.

But, what is it for?

NAPL is intended to be used as an alternative to RPC to reduce resource usage and boost performance. For example, instead of a web browser sending an AJAX request back to a server to perform sorting and filtering operations, the server could have sent a NAPL function, generated on whatever platform the server happens to be using, that will safely be evaluated locally in the web browser.

The nature of NAPL makes it safe to use even between partially trusted systems. Functions defined in NAPL are guaranteed to be pure functions that cannot read or affect state when evaluated. NAPL functions are also guaranteed to terminate with a result in a timely manner, as it intentionally does not include generic looping or recursion constructs, making it safe to use even in single threaded applications such as JavaScript, as well as performance critical applications such as servers.

What's in the box?

NAPL includes an API for defining functions, a compact binary serialization format based on Google Protocol Buffers for sending functions across networks or persist for later use, and a compiler for converting NAPL functions to efficient platform native functions.

NAPL is currently implemented for the .NET platform only, with plans to support Java and JavaScript.