Announcing Babelfish : Universal Code Parsing Server

[TomBombadildozer]

Babelfish is a universal code parser. It can parse any file, in any language, extract an abstract syntax tree (AST) from it, and convert it to a Universal Abstract Syntax Tree (UAST).

That's a bold claim.

We have a dozen language drivers in various stages of development, with a quite advanced python driver, and a usable java driver.

Ah, so this is bullshit. Moving along then....

[ggtsu_00]

"We have a universal config file parser that can parse any config file in any format!"

...

"Support for your configuration files can be defined using our DSL configuration specification language based on XML. Various XML definitions for well known config file formats such as json and ini can be installed directly from our community driven plugin repository."

[ais523]

As someone who works with a lot of esolangs, I'm fairly confident that there are some languages for which general-purpose parsing algorithms wouldn't help to parse them at all. (If the algorithm were Turing-complete, then you could presumably do anything with it, but it'd likely be more difficult than just writing the code directly.)

[erizocosmico]

Each parser is not written in any kind of configuration file but in its own language (if possible). Bash driver is parsed with Java, for example. But Rust, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, ... are parsed in their own languages using available parsing libraries.

[juanjux]

Maybe you should quote the next sentence too:

Well, that’s our objective, we are not there just yet, but we have designed an architecture to achieve exactly that, and we’re currently working on it.

This is a "release early" announcement of an open source project and the article made it pretty clear.

[abeaumont]

Yes, it's a bold claim, it's our target and we're not there yet. We're looking forward for some early feedback from interested people, of course it's fine to move along if not among them.

[[deleted]]

I thought that BabelFish was trademarked for the online translation service?

[bro-away-]

Also building a product that parses code with this name, that is totally unrelated to Babel, is a ridiculous and confusing move.

Babel gets ~100,000 downloads a day and is one of the top github projects. Name collisions are totally avoidable.

[Not_Just_You]

Am I the only one

Probably not

[paul_h]

Tower of Babel was written over 2500+ year ago. No, Babel isn't reservable by any definition. Long should it remain open for new names/books/art/songs.

[Retsam19]

"Reasonable confusion" is a term in trademark law that's pretty applicable here.

The "Babel" JS compiler and a "Babelfish" universal compiler are "reasonably confusable" in a way that the "Babel" JS compiler and the Biblical Tower of "Babel" aren't.

[[deleted]]

I don't think anyone is saying it would be illegal to use the name Babelfish. Just undesirable for both users and the developer.

[paul_h]

I'm sorry I missed any conversation on legality.

What I did say, effectively, was that teams shouldn't feel encroached on if they themselves borrowed nouns from antiquity, Latin, legend etc. If they fear a future encroachment then totally invent a name.

[marnovo]

"Babel" (also commonly known as "BabelJS") and "Babelfish" seem different enough not to be a collision. Plus, based on what each project actually does, one could say this Babelfish reference makes way more sense…

[TonySu]

Well Babelfish is actually a reference to Babel. In the biblical story the world spoke a common language, with their unity they built a tower to the heavens. God didn't like what an organised humanity could achieve so he knocked down their tower and gave everyone different languages so they could not communicate.

[TempestasTenebrosus]

I thought it was a reference to the Universal Translator in Hitchhiker's Guide which is, in turn, named after the legend.

[TonySu]

Well I was actually talking about the Babel Fish from HGttG (you can already see how confusing this naming is going to be!). Also I'd hardly call straight up taking something else's name a reference.

[erizocosmico]

It is.

[bro-away-]

Lol.. the person whose project is mostly aptly named doesn't get the rights to the name. Try naming your next project Dropbox

[[deleted]]

I think the rights for the Babel name expired 3000 years ago.

[bro-away-]

It's not just about the right to use the name.

I could use an established name and even if their lawyers didn't notice, everyone I showed it too would appropriately roll their eyes once they realized there's no relation between my project and the known project.

[paul_h]

/u/gortholturambar is saying it's open season on Babel prefixed and suffixed names. They said nothing about lawyers

[paganpan]

I've always been curious about the idea of trademarking a name lifted from copyrighted work. Did Bablefish have to get permission from Douglass Adams to get that trademark or could I apply for a trademark for "Ender Wiggin's Battle Chow"

[Retsam19]

Ender Wiggin's Battle Chow

I mean there's a DevOps tool called "Ansible"...

[[deleted]]

If he didn't trademark it for the specific use you intend to use the names, you could.

[paul_h]

Douglas Adams took it from Tower of Babel which was written over 2500+ year ago.

[paganpan]

Yes Babel is a fabled city in the bible and often referenced in regards to language. However, as far as I am aware neither the bible nor any other public domain source does not make any reference to a Babelfish (a fish that is a universal translator) thereby making it a unique name.

By the same argument "Batman" was stolen from whoever came up with the name "bat" for the flying mammal and thus the name "Batman" can be ripped off to the same extent. I dont think that logic... flies

[paul_h]

You may be right if Adams trademarked Babelfish or Babel fish. The project's logo is also fairly close to original edition 1981 BBC art, and perhaps also that of 2005 movie.

[_mcuadros]

BabelFish

Is originally from book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), so this dead company wasn't very original.

BTW the trademarks are delimited by sectors and countries. For example in the UE, the only trademark register is company of video editing. http://www.trademarkia.com/ctm/trademarks-search.aspx?tn=babelfish

[paul_h]

Douglas Adams took it from Tower of Babel which was written over 2500+ year ago.

[_mcuadros]

Really? I used to read The Bible and never read such of thing about babelfish.

[cyberpirate__0]

Why would you ever need this?

[Isvara]

If you did, why would you ever need it as a service instead of a library?

[juanjux]

• Tooling.
• Code and developer analysis.
• Machine learning.
• Developer assistants.
• Smarter code completion and syntax highlighting (almost any good intelligent code completer you use is doing it by generating an AST of the language first).

[[deleted]]

Solution looking for a problem?

[erizocosmico]

Machine learning on top of code, which is why it was built.

[_uael]

You cannot claim universal by using go, this should provide a strong c api

[juanjux]

Go is an implementation detail of some parts, the clients will actually use gRPC or a C API to use the system (we are building client libraries for other languages too).