Reported by Machine Heart
Machine Heart Editorial Team
Recently, some media reported the emergence of a domestic programming language aimed at smart IoT and programming education, named Mulan. The news sparked discussions in the developer community. However, some discovered that the unpacked program package is actually a Python?
Programming languages are essential tools for interaction between humans and computers.From C, C++ to Python, Julia, different programming languages have large development communities due to their unique characteristics and functionalities.Recently, domestic reports indicated that the Compiler Group of the National Key Laboratory of Computer Architecture under the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has led the development of a new programming language: Mulan (Module Unit Language).
According to related reports, this programming language was entirely designed, developed, and implemented by the Compiler Group.The accompanying compiler and integrated development tools were also fully realized by the team, making it a programming language that truly masters core technology.However, Machine Heart could not find relevant information on the official website of the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The report quickly attracted the attention of the developer community, and many developers have begun to use and study it.The unpacking results revealed that it is actually Python 3.7?
Currently, the Mulan language is available for download.
Download link: http://www.dongshouke.com/download/ulang-0.2.2.exe
“Starting with Programming Education, Aimed at Smart IoT”
According to the released information, this programming language is aimed at the future of smart IoT.
In the field of smart IoT applications, there is currently no dedicated programming language.Developing smart applications within existing language systems requires multiple engineers and cross-language implementations, leading to low development efficiency.“Mulan” aims to create a smart execution platform for IoT and provide an execution environment for the applications written.
In the IoT field, there is currently no dedicated programming language.During the development of existing IoT applications, multiple engineers need to collaborate and implement applications through cross-language methods, which results in lower efficiency.To improve efficiency and create a smart execution platform for IoT, Mulan was born.
However, due to the immature ecosystem of this language, Mulan will be more used in the early stages to cultivate the ecosystem through youth programming education.It is reported that programming software, AI textbooks, and teaching equipment developed based on “Mulan” have already been implemented in primary and secondary schools and kindergartens.
According to the official website, “Mulan” is a programming language with independent intellectual property rights in China, specifically designed for AI education, developed by Zhongke Zhixin.Since its primary purpose is education, it intentionally avoids some complex features of programming languages, such as environment debugging, to prevent students from being bogged down by details at the beginning of their programming learning.The development team prefers to make “Mulan” stand out for its ease of understanding, learning, reading, and maintenance, while the language currently supports cross-platform compatibility with Android, UNIX, and Windows.
From a software perspective, in the current programming education market, there are many similar programming software, and to lower the educational threshold, graphical programming is also used.Therefore, in terms of substantial differences, the focus must return to the programming language “Mulan” itself.
What is the Mulan Language Like?
For a “domestic language”, expectations are very high, and many developers have downloaded the ulang-0.2.2.exe “Mulan” language environment.Upon opening the Mulan language environment, it first presents a command-line-like programming environment, where we find that many of its functions are consistent with Python.In the programming interface, typing help reveals some related information, but we did not find more programming language documentation.
Overall, the Mulan language, in addition to basic data structures and functions, will also add some basic mathematical operations, such as logarithms, exponents, trigonometric functions, etc., which may be more suitable for basic education.
Welcome to ulang’s REPL.. Type ‘help’ for more informations. a = [‘hello’, ‘world’] print(a) [hello, world]> print(typeof(a)) list> print(cos(90)) -0.4480736161291701> print(cos(45)) 0.5253219888177297> print(cos(0)) 1.0>
From Unpacking to Heated Debate
On Zhihu, many developers discovered that the unpacked Mulan language is actually built on Python, compiling the environment, packages, and projects created with Python into an executable file.So it seems that Mulan merely created an interface at the top level, delegating many underlying compilation and optimization tasks to the original Python?
The following shows the unpacking results of the EXE file (using PyInstaller Extractor):
The unpacking results indicate that the “Mulan” language is packaged into an executable file using PyInstaller from Python files.
In fact, we are quite familiar with the Wenyan programming language, which clearly focuses only on syntax and frontend, leaving all underlying operations to JavaScript or Python.If we only consider packaging the Python environment into a runnable file for children’s programming, then this may not be a problem.However, if we aim to build a programming language with independent intellectual property, there are many considerations, such as language features, compilation optimization, and ensuring runtime speed, all of which are daunting challenges.
Regarding the Wenyan programming open-source project, we believe it is a very good attempt, allowing for the writing of cool Wenyan code in spare time.However, such a language cannot be used in production or research environments; it can only be a form of entertainment.If we want to create a new language for a specific domain, the underlying optimization and design must be done separately, and such a product can be considered a distinctive independent programming language.
Developer Community:Many Critiques
A developer evaluated the Mulan language from the following three perspectives:
1. Can it meet actual needs:A programming language requires many features to be competent in certain scenarios.However, currently, it seems that the Mulan language does not exhibit these features.
2. Is it integrated into the open-source community:A non-open-source language is hard to progress.
3. Is it suitable for youth programming:As an educational language, it is not as intuitive as graphical symbol languages.Students will still need to relearn programming languages in their work after learning.
For more related discussions, please check the link:https://www.zhihu.com/question/366509495
Many other developers have also expressed their views, whether criticizing the design of the language itself or the surrounding materials of the programming language.Meanwhile, from everyone’s comments, it is clear that we hope to make real contributions to the underlying architecture and tools of programming languages and system frameworks.These contributions may take a long time to settle and require many engineering efforts to optimize, but this is what we should strive to overcome.
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