February 2010
Beginner
255 pages
6h 10m
English
Content preview from 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 23. Domain-Specific Languages
WHENEVER YOU LISTEN TO A DISCUSSION BY EXPERTS in any domain, be it chess players, kindergarten teachers, or insurance agents, you’ll notice that their vocabulary is quite different from everyday language. That’s part of what domain-specific languages (DSLs) are about: a specific domain has a specialized vocabulary to describe the things that are particular to that domain.
In the world of software, DSLs are about executable expressions in a language specific to a domain, employing a limited vocabulary and grammar that is readable, understandable, and—hopefully—writable by domain experts. DSLs targeted at software developers or scientists have been around for a long time. The Unix “little languages” found in configuration files and the languages created with the power of LISP macros are some of the older examples.
DSLs are commonly classified as either internal or external:
Internal DSLs
Are written in a general-purpose programming language whose syntax has been bent to look much more like natural language. This is easier for languages that offer more syntactic sugar and formatting possibilities (e.g., Ruby and Scala) than it is for others that do not (e.g., Java). Most internal DSLs wrap existing APIs, libraries, or business code and provide a wrapper for less mind-bending access to the functionality. They are directly executable by ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.