(5256) Building DSLs in Static & Dynamic Languages

Technical long talk 50 min

Tuesday, 2008-06-24, 16:30 - 17:20, Arena 5

Neal Ford - ThoughtWorks (speaker)

Topics

• Scripting

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Abstract

You've heard all the hype for the past couple of years: Domain Specific 
Languages (DSLs) are going to take over the world. This session demystifies this 
topic in 2 ways: by providing concrete definitions for styles and applicability 
of DSLs and showing how to implement these different styles. I build up 
definitions for the different types of DSLs in static (Java) and dynamic (Groovy 
and Ruby) languages. Then, I discuss building DSLs as internal (i.e., built on 
top of an underlying language) and external (built using a preprocessor or 
grammar), with examples of each. Throughout this session, I discuss the 
applicability of this style of development and show targeted examples. I discuss 
fluent interfaces and techniques for building them, including problems. 
Incidentally, I show some cool language features of both Groovy and Ruby that 
make building DSLs easier in those languages.

    * Why DSLs
    * Abstraction
    * Internal vs. External DSLs
    * Fluent Interfaces
    * Building Blocks
    * Internal DSLs
          o In Java
          o In Groovy
          o In Ruby
    * External DSLs
    * The Finishing Problem
    * Patterns of DSLs
    * Best Practices and Applications