Aug 24, 2020Why I’m writing a new book about DSLsThe topic of Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs), and the wider topics of software language engineering and model-driven software development (MDSD), have held great promise over several decades already. Then why aren’t we all building DSLs to do our projects with MDSD-style? I think several problems cause that. Below, I’ll outline these…Domain Specific Languages4 min readDomain Specific Languages4 min read
Aug 14, 2020I’m writing a book about Domain-Specific Languages“A while ago” I was approached by Manning Publications: whether I was down for writing a book about these things called Domain-Specific Languages. I happily obliged, and in the meanwhile, they have deemed the latest version of the contents good and substantial enough to go into the Manning Early Access…Domain Specific Languages2 min readDomain Specific Languages2 min read
May 29, 2018Scripting considered harmfulWhile I was wrestling with some ghastly batch script the other day, it struck me that we seem to be relatively loathe to hold the, often quite dark, art of scripting to the same standards as we do other aspects of software engineering principles. In random order: Scripting languages have…Scripting4 min readScripting4 min read
Apr 24, 2018The Munich MPS Meetup 2018: my impressionLast week, I went to the Munich MPS Meetup 2018 (see agenda), intended for practitioners to learn about what other are doing with MPS and how. My key takeaways of this event are as follows. I think the most important remark was by Eugen Schindler of Océ who got a…Programming2 min readProgramming2 min read
Feb 27, 2018Why so meta?Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of work in Jetbrains’ language workbench MPS. Even though the initial learning was a bit slower than expected, this has been a very happy experience so far. Especially implementing actual languages with it has been thrillingly simple and productive, and I got the hang…Programming4 min readProgramming4 min read
Jan 31, 2018Post-mortem for MásMás was my attempt at a Web-based workbench for projectional modelling languages which I’ve effectively abandoned late 2014. …Programming7 min readProgramming7 min read
Jan 16, 2018Code generation with MPS for the uninitiated and/or textually inclinedRecently, I’ve had my first stint with MPS and for the most part, it’s been a hoot. …Programming4 min readProgramming4 min read
Sep 18, 2017What goes into creating a projectional editor?A veritable library has been filled with literature about parsing in its gazillion variants. A somewhat smaller library has been populated with how to translate that into editors that can be integrated into quality IDEs. I’m not aware of any equivalent of the “Dragon Book” for projectional editors. This cannot…Domain Specific Languages5 min readDomain Specific Languages5 min read
Sep 13, 2017More mathematics! (instead of programming)Via Twitter I stumbled on letter to the editor by economist Ewoud Jansen about the “hype” surrounding the necessity of learning how to program in schools, ranging from high school to even pre-school, which starts at age 4 in the Netherlands. This “essay” struck a certain nerve with me, probably…Education5 min readEducation5 min read
Jul 17, 2017The MPVC PatternProvocative sub title: “MVC isn’t dead, it just needs a P” ;) The Model-View-Controller Pattern has been around for a long time — long enough in fact to remember the years of Reagan’s White House residency. It has been often derided as being old-fashioned, too strict, or plain wrong, but…JavaScript5 min readJavaScript5 min read
