No matter how many programming languages there are in the world, someone will always decide that nothing quite suits his or her needs. And if that decision is backed up with significant quantities of skill, imagination, and a touch of masochism, the result may be a shiny new language.

A group of computer science researchers at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island got the itch, and have produced a language designed for modern client-based Web applications such as mashups (think Ajax).

That language is Flapjax.

Flapjax is built on top of JavaScript, so its syntax is simple to learn for JavaScript programmers. And because it's based on JavaScript, it runs in virtually any Web browser without plug-ins or other downloads. You produce your Flapjax code, then compile it either online or using the downloadable compiler and libraries. Or, if you'd rather, you can simply use Flapjax as a library within JavaScript (although in that case some things the compiler usually takes care of will need to be manually coded).

So, you ask, why bother – it's just more JavaScript, right?

Well, not quite. Flapjax offers a few extra goodies that make it potentially worth having.

For example, Flapjax is globally persistent. The developers describe it like this in their blog. "For now, Flapjax gives each user a 'home object'; their data are held by fields. From the program's viewpoint it's just a persistent object, but the user can think of fields as a pun for subdirectories, and use the object-browser like a file-browser." It also has its own server-based store so groups of users can share data.

It is what the developers call functional reactive JavaScript—that is, it can deal with data that is constantly changing, without polling or Java pushlets. When the value of the data changes, the program will automatically recompute as necessary.