[Lrde Annonce] ACCU 2012 session on language extensibility

Hello, and happy new year to all ! I'm pleased to announce that I will hold a 90 minutes session at the next ACCU conference in Oxford, April 2012. The session's topic is given below: Impact of Extensibility on Domain Specific Language Design and Implementation Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are usually very different from the general purpose language (GPL) in which the embedding application is written. The need for designing a DSL as a completely new language often comes from the lack of extensibility of the chosen GPL. By imposing a rigid syntax, a set of predefined operators and data structures, the traditional GPL approach leaves no choice but to implement a DSL as a different language, with its own lexical and syntactic parser, semantic analyzer and possibly its own brand new interpreter or even compiler. Some GPLs, however, are extensible or customizable enough to let one implement a DSL merely as either a subset or an extension of the original language. While the end-user does not see a difference with the traditional approach, the gain for the developer is substantial. Since the DSL is now just another entry point for the same original GPL, there is essentially only one application written in only one language to maintain. Moreover, no specific language infrastructure (parser, interpreter, compiler etc.) is required for the DSL anymore, since it is simply expressed in terms of the original GPL. The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate the most important factors that make a language truly extensible, and to show how extensibility impacts the process of DSL design and implementation. -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Scientific site: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier Music (Jazz) site: http://www.didierverna.com EPITA/LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire, 94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France Tel. +33 (0)1 44 08 01 85 Fax. +33 (0)1 53 14 59 22