x++: The World’s First Full XML-Based Programming Language Released!. Top XML Jun 24 2002 5:37PM ET [Moreover – XML and metadata news]

It is…well…something I would never have suspected seeing.  [Justin Rudd’s Radio Weblog]

I’ll second that!  This is interesting…although I’m not completely sure I understand the point.  I do disagree with the scenario he lays out, though:

“Everything is going fine and dandy when one day, the source company is forced through circumstances to change their [XML] data format.  […]  In the x++ case, the entire x++ object with the data is shipped off and the destination company’s XML client code can access the methods of the object and get the data– without caring what the actual data format is lexically!”

In my experience, the lexical format isn’t always what causes problems in the interop case.  If the source vendor adds a new data field, the client vendor has to modify his code to take advantage of the new data in a meaningful way.  So even if operations are packaged with the code (as in x++), the client must still change to deal with data additions/deletions.  The obvious exception is if the data is purely reorganized, in which case the above scenario is valid; but I think this is not the most common case.

And one other thought…in transaction- and service-oriented architectures, we have taught ourselves to separate data from actions; separate nouns from verbs.  X++ thrives on the merging of code and data.  Interesting.