Room 101

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Gilad Bracha's blog. A place to be (re)educated in Newspeak

We have Good news, and we have Bad news

First, the good news. We will be releasing a Newspeak prototype in the first week of January 2009. This prototype is anything but finished, but it will have to do, because of the bad news (insert dramatic pause here).

What's the bad news? Well, funding for the Newspeak team is being discontinued in early January, another victim of the times.

We are currently seeking a new home for Newspeak, but it is by no means certain that such a thing can be found in the current economic climate. Perhaps I should take the Newspeak private jet to Washington and demand a bail-out - but alas, the jet is indisposed (when I call it all I get is message not understood)

We expect to keep pushing the Newspeak platform forward in any event; that said, there's a big difference between having several developers fully dedicated to a project, and the limited efforts people can make in their spare time. So the goal is to find support for the project soon - otherwise we'll all go get other jobs and progress on Newspeak will slow down accordingly.

Of course, once we put out the prototype, others can help fill in the blanks. I hope that will happen, irrespective of whether Newspeak gets further funding. I also plan to write up our work on Newspeak for academic publication.

Hopefully, this is only a temporary setback, and in it lies new opportunity: per aspera ad astra.