Live from Washington, D.C. the latest announcements from Into the Box 2024vand Ortus Solutions.

1. Pre-Release Intro
LED BY
Ortus Team
Codename: Jericho

2. Keynote Day 1
Starting 9:00am Central
LED BY
Luis F. Majano

3. WELCOME
#ITB2024
Day 1
@GOINTOTHEBOX @ORTUSSOLUTIONS

4. LUIS F. MAJANO
Your Host
• CEO Ortus Solutions
• Computer Engineer
• Creator of all things box!
• Documentation Weirdo!
@lmajano @ortussolutions

5. Two most important
Facts to know…
Wifi
@MarriotBonvoy_Conference
Bathrooms

6. Thank Our Sponsors

7. Thank Our Speakers

8. Eric Peterson
USA
Gavin Pickin
USA
Esme Acevedo
USA
Brad Wood
USA
Cristobal Escobar
Spain
Thank ITB Committee
Maria Jose Herrera
El Salvador
Jorge Reyes
Switzerland
Edgardo Cabezas
El Salvador

9. Recordings
• Free access to all attendees
• 2-3 Weeks after ITB
• www.cfcasts.com

10. HAPPY BOX
6:30PM

11. • Tomorrow after the last session!
• Must be present to win!
• RaffleBox!
Don’t miss out!

12. • My name is Jericho, what’s yours?
The Social Minute

13. Today Is No Ordinary Day!
We have been keeping a se

14. Trailer Here

15. BoxLang is a modular dynamic language for the JVM, aiming to make your
development more productive, expressive, functional, and available
everywhere.
DYNAMIC : MODULAR : PRODUCTIVE
BETA

16. Goals & Vision
• A new evolution
• Be dynamic, modular, lightweight, and fast
• Be 100% interoperable with Java
• Be modern, functional, and
fl
uent
(Think mixing CFML, Node, Kotlin, Java, and
Clojure)
• Modularity at its core
• Take advantage of the modern JVM
• TDD: Fully tested source code
• Be able to support multiple runtimes
• Have multiple transpilers
CFML -> BoxLang,
Groovy -> BoxLang
X -> BoxLang
• IDE and Tools
• All of our libraries needed to run
• Compete in today’s language environments

17. Key Features

18. Multi-Runtime Architecture

19. Multi-Runtime Architecture

20. Strict Dependency Graph

21. Strict Dependency Graph
• Core to be small and focused
• Only add a third party if extremely necessary
• Rely on the JDK as much as possible
• Lower surface attack area
• Extremely small distribution
• Extend via Modules with their own dependencies
commons-io
Antlr
javaparser/asm
commons-lang
jackson-jr
slf4j
logback
Hikari

22. BoxLang Framework

23. BoxLang Framework
RUNTIME
Application
Service
Async
Service
Cache
Service
Component
Service
Datasource
Service
Function
Service
Interceptor
Service
Module
Service
Scheduler
Service

24. Enterprise Caching Engine & Aggregator

25. Enterprise Caching Engine & Aggregator
• Inspired by CacheBox
• Enterprise Caching Engine
• Extensible
• Custom providers
• Custom object stores
• Listeners
• Stats
• Powers all internal caching

26. Scheduling & Task Framework

27. Scheduling & Task Framework
• Inspired by ColdBox
• Schedulers are portable,
fl
uent, and human
• Task & Completable Futures framework from the
JDK
• Access to any executor in Java
• Run schedules as cron jobs; no server is needed
• Write them in BoxLang or Java

28. Professional Open Source + Subscriptions

29. • BoxLang Community (Free & Open Source)
• Apache 2
• Two Commercial Subscriptions
• BoxLang +
• Support
• Enterprise Modules & Features
• BoxLang + +
• Increased Support
• Custom Builds
• Dedicated Engineer
Professional Open Source

30. ARCHITECTURE
With Brad Wood

31. Modern Dynamic Language

32. Modern Dynamic Language
• Dynamically typed just like CFML, but we go further…
• JDK21+ Minimum
• JSR-223 Compliant
• No re
fl
ection, we use InvokeDynamic for everything
• DynamicObject: Any Object can be Dynamic!
• Type inference, auto-casting, type promotions
• Interface and superclass default method promotions
• Use all new JDK features and types
• Collection of Dynamic Casters and Helpers

33. Java Interop

34. Java Interop
• Interact with Java with no bridges
• It’s just part of the language; no more separation
• You can import, extend, implement, annotate, etc
• Execute BoxLang within Java and Java within BoxLang
• Concept of object resolvers: java, bx, custom
• New BoxLang Scripting: MyScript.bxs
• Components become Classes: MyClass.bx
• All bx/bxm/bxs are runnable via the OS
• Classes can have a main() convention
Java Interop

35. Pure Functions + Immutable Classes
• Support not only closures (=>) but pure functions (->)
• No side e
ff
ects, no carry-over contexts, pure speed
• Especially for asynchronous programming
• New Immutable classes:
• Arrays, Structs, and Queries
• Great for async safety, read-only snapshots, speed and
more.

36. Multi-Parsers

37. Multi-Parsers : BoxLang + CFML + ???
• Our way to split with the old and bring in the new
• Transpile CFML into BoxLang
• BoxLang is a NEW clean slate
• Compat module for Adobe/Lucee
• Future > Groovy to BoxLang, ??? To BoxLang
• CFTranspiler CLI Tooling
• Feature Audit Tool
• Multi-Step Compiler
• BX -> Java -> ByteCode (DebugMode)
• Bx -> Bytecode (Almost done)
Choose your path wisely!
.cfc, .cfm
.bx, bxs, bxm

38. Event Driven Language

39. Event Driven Language
• Interceptors for the language, application, and request
• The best way to scale the language
• Listen to the entire or speci
fi
c language life-cycles
• Modules can listen/collaborate events
Event Channels
Event Producers
Event
Event
Event
Event Consumers
Event
Event
Event

40. Tested & Documented

41. Tested & Documented
• TDD/BDD at the core of the language
• 3000+ Tests Already
• Test not only Java but BoxLang inline
• Native BoxLang Assert constructs built-in
• Fully Documented
• Generated API Docs
• boxlang.ortusbooks.com

42. TOOLING
With Jacob Beers

43. Tooling Overview
• BoxLang IDE
• Language Debugger & LSP
• Executable scripts within the IDE
• Run Scripts and Servers
• Converters
• Visualizers
• CLI Tools
• REPL
• BoxLang Unix Scripting
• Script, Module, and Schedule Runners
• Convert CFML to BoxLang
• BoxLang to Bytecode
• Package BoxLang apps & modules

44. Tooling - IDE
• Modern development
fl
ow
• Inline documentation
• Inline web server with debugging
• Run BL/CF code directly within VSCode
• Debugger
• Language Server
• Committed to ongoing support and development - new
features are on the way!

45. Tooling - Debugger
• Purpose built
• Integrates with VSCode via Microsoft’s DAP
• Can debug both the CLI runtime and web
server
• You’ll never use writeDump() again!

46. Tooling - Language Server
• Already powering the extension!
• The BoxLang runtime was built with the LSP in mind
• Full access to the BoxLang syntax parser/compiler
• Access to all BoxLang con
fi
guration, datasources,
mappings, etc…
• Extensible via BoxLang modules
• Foundational for modern language tools
• Intellisense
• static analysis
• More coming soon…

47. Demo Time
🤞
Tooling

48. Tooling - Roadmap
• Near future
• Communication between the debugger and language server
• Static code analysis/type hinting
• Extension based CommandBox + BoxLang Server management
• Community engagement!
• +,++ version of debugger
• Language server plugins

49. MODULES
With Jon Clausen

50. Modular Needs
Modern Runtimes Have Various Needs!
( and CFML paradigms are outdated )
• Web Applications - HTTP Request/Response Data
• Tasks and Queues - Watchers, Event Handling, Async
• Lambda and CLI - fast start and blazing speeds!
• iOS/Android - Low resource footprint, event handling
• Web Assembly – Transpilation and Sandboxing

51. BoxLang Modules
• Inspired by ColdBox modules, NOT OSGI
• Core Runtime with lightest possible footprint
• Taps into the language life-cycle
• Write them in Java or BoxLang or Both!
• Executable as CLI packages
• Integrates with Maven/Gradle

52. BoxLang Modular By Design!
• Modular ecosystem, delivered by FORGEBOX
• Core modules for DBMS’, Alternate Runtimes ( e.g. Lambda ),
Mail, Encryption, CFML compatibility and more!
• Write your own functions, components ( tags ), schedulers, JDBC
Drivers, interceptions and more!
• Boundless potential for community contribution and
engagement!
• Foment third-party vendors
• FORGEBOX eCommerce Marketplace later this year

53. BoxLang Extends BoxLang
In
fl
uence core runtime behavior with BIFs,
Member Functions, Tags, Interceptors, and More!

54. BoxLang Modules
Take control of your own runtime,
in your own language!

55. Demo Time
🤞
Modules

56. TRY
With Gavin Pickin

57. Wanna play?
• try.boxlang.io
• Internet playground for BoxLang
• First Production BoxLang application
• Powered by our AWS Lambda Runtime
• Skinnable
• Embeddable on any Site
• +/++ More Features Coming Soon

58. How did we build Try BoxLang in under 48 Hours?
• I will be presenting a Secret Session looking at how Try BoxLang
was built…
fi
nal session on Day 2
• Quick Rundown
• Monaco Editor (VSCode) Web Component
• But we had several architectural design decisions to make
• Should we spin up a docker container per request?
• Should we have 5, 10, 20 replicas on Docker Swarm?
• Do we pass the code to a Docker Image with the CLI running?
• Should we make an image with an API and return code from
the API?

59. AWS Lambda Runtime
• Every Try.BoxLang.io request can
fi
re up its very own Lamba request
• That means:
• We never have to worry about how many instances we have
• We never have to worry about queueing
• We never have to worry about bad actors accessing other people’s
fi
les
• We can easily update our Lambda runtime and all instances will be
running new code
• Scale up as big or as small as we want

60. What can you try?
• You can Try BoxLang code
• You can Try CF Code running in BoxLang
• You can see the evaluated results
• You can see the bu
ff
er output
• Copy Paste URLs to load code

61. Coming Soon!
• You will be able to see the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) for your code
• You will be able to see the console/system output
• Ability to load code from GIST links
• +/++ Features
• Ability to Save to ForgeBox
• Create Projects like repli.it
• Install Modules

62. TryBoxLang in the BoxLang IDE
• We want to make trying BoxLang even more accessible, so we’re working
on integrating it into the VSCode BoxLang IDE as a Window.
• Select code sections and use the command palette or shortcuts to open it
in Try.BoxLang.io instead of copying and pasting.
• Select code sections and save to ForgeBox
• The adventure has just started…

63. THE FUTURE IS
DYNAMIC
With Luis Majano

64. Key Features

65. • Open Beta Today!
• Final Release Fall 2024
• Need you to test and run!
• Limited Visionary Licenses
• One Price = Unlimited Licenses & Updates Forever
• For visionary companies/individuals that believe and
want to support the project
• sales@boxlang.io
• We are committed to the future
• It’s time for a revolution!
What’s Next!

66. THANK YOU