4 ms·

Big problem --> New DSL --> Common Lisp

• greendestiny 18y ago
  And without the generalities?
• gaius 18y ago
  I think most new DSLs are either Ruby under the hood, or extensions to Tcl or Guile.
  • Hexstream 18y ago
    What?... I think the big problem with DSLs is that people think it's a complicated technique that's applicable only in a few specific, obscure cases. It's actually a technique that scales well, in the sense that you can make languages as simple or as complex as you need, with an implementation as featureful of trivial as you need (just a bunch of macros VS a full compiler and VM complete with high-level debugger), and if you use a language like Lisp that makes it easy to prototype new languages (the lisp reader, macros and closures help a lot) you can afford to make a few DSLs just for one app if you like. Just for my web framework in the making, I have 5 DSLs: Purely declarative configuration management (almost done), static and dynamic HTML and CSS generation and manipulation (done, but I have plans for something better), HTML and CSS rewriting (in the making), i18n resources (in the making but very simple). And no doubt I'll need a few more for my specific applications.
    • gaius 18y ago
      Indeed - I'm just saying that people generally aren't using LISP to write DSLs in. If I needed one now I'd probably either use Tcl as a base or write it in OCaml. LISP isn't really even on the radar for this.