3 ms·

Metalinguistic Abstractions in Ruby

29 points by raganwald 17y ago

jamesbritt 17y ago
Reg, thanks very much for this. I haven't read the whole thing (I have to get some work done first), but serious consideration of what is or isn't a DSL is always welcome. Much of what I see aren't DSLs; they are more domain-specific dialects or, really, APIs. The trouble is that people have different critical judgment when they view something as an API or as a DSL, with the notion of a DSL allowing less well-considered APIs to slip though. "This discussion is extracted from a forthcoming talk--"The Revised, Revised Ruby.rewrite(Ruby)" or "R5"--to be be delivered at Stack Overflow Dev Days." Will this be recorded?
- raganwald 17y ago
  I don't know whether the talks will be recorded. It's being organized by Carsonified: http://stackoverflow.carsonified.com/events/toronto/ http://stackoverflow.carsonified.com/events/toronto/ I get the last spot, the one everyone skips to get an early start on their BEveERages.
kscaldef 17y ago
You spend a lot of time talking about semantics and levels of abstraction, but there's no mention at all of syntax. I find it difficult to consider something a "language" when the syntactic rules are completely decoupled from the abstractions that it describes.
- raganwald 17y ago
  Hello again! Thanks for anticipating the next post that is currently in draft form. I am extremely interested in what I call "meta-syntactic programming" and everybody else calls "Macros circa 1969." http://github.com/raganwald/rewrite_rails#readme http://github.com/raganwald/rewrite_rails#readme
10ren 17y ago
I like your abstractioneering section about slides (though not the title). Makes absolute sense: if your program is intended to communicate something to somebody, think of it in terms of something else you use for communication. I find I have to wait til I'd written a fair bit of a project before I can divide it up into modules correctly --- you need to understand a problem really well before know what the sections need to be. I guess in "giving a presentation" that you already understand the project and have finished it is implicit. But maybe your metaphor will help even in the process. I'll try it. :-)
- raganwald 17y ago
  When developing a presentation I often re-organize it as I understand it better and get a fix on how I want to communicate the subject. Would software be any different?

29 points by raganwald 17y ago

Reg, thanks very much for this. I haven't read the whole thing (I have to get some work done first), but serious consideration of what is or isn't a DSL is always welcome. Much of what I see aren't DSLs; they are more domain-specific dialects or, really, APIs. The trouble is that people have different critical judgment when they view something as an API or as a DSL, with the notion of a DSL allowing less well-considered APIs to slip though. "This discussion is extracted from a forthcoming talk--"The Revised, Revised Ruby.rewrite(Ruby)" or "R5"--to be be delivered at Stack Overflow Dev Days." Will this be recorded?

raganwald 17y ago
I don't know whether the talks will be recorded. It's being organized by Carsonified: http://stackoverflow.carsonified.com/events/toronto/ http://stackoverflow.carsonified.com/events/toronto/ I get the last spot, the one everyone skips to get an early start on their BEveERages.

kscaldef 17y ago

You spend a lot of time talking about semantics and levels of abstraction, but there's no mention at all of syntax. I find it difficult to consider something a "language" when the syntactic rules are completely decoupled from the abstractions that it describes.

raganwald 17y ago
Hello again! Thanks for anticipating the next post that is currently in draft form. I am extremely interested in what I call "meta-syntactic programming" and everybody else calls "Macros circa 1969." http://github.com/raganwald/rewrite_rails#readme http://github.com/raganwald/rewrite_rails#readme

10ren 17y ago

I like your abstractioneering section about slides (though not the title). Makes absolute sense: if your program is intended to communicate something to somebody, think of it in terms of something else you use for communication. I find I have to wait til I'd written a fair bit of a project before I can divide it up into modules correctly --- you need to understand a problem really well before know what the sections need to be. I guess in "giving a presentation" that you already understand the project and have finished it is implicit. But maybe your metaphor will help even in the process. I'll try it. :-)

raganwald 17y ago
When developing a presentation I often re-organize it as I understand it better and get a fix on how I want to communicate the subject. Would software be any different?