Increasing Support of Dynamic Languages

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Developers have created several increasingly popular development platforms that use dynamic languages:

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
AJAX is not a technology. It is really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:

• Standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).


• Dynamic display and interaction using the DOM (Document Object Model), which defines a standard way for accessing and manipulating HTML documents.


• Data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT.


• Asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest.


• JavaScript binding everything together.

The Ajax example below shows how a web page can communicate with a web server online as a user enters data into a standard HTML form:

Course:   Suggestions:

Other Ajax examples include

• Google Suggest: Watch the way the suggested terms update as you type, almost instantly.


• Google Maps: Use your cursor to grab the map and scroll around a bit. Again, everything happens almost instantly.

Ruby on Rails
Rails is a full-stack framework for developing database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Control pattern.