Thursday, September 15, 2005

Thoughts on Domain Languages

Smalltalk is close to the domain.
Ruby, as well.
Eiffel, too.
Haskell as well.

from this interview:

AT: Most languages require you to pay a "language tax": code that does nothing with the main algorithm, placed there only to make the computer happy.
...
Haskell also encourages you to shape the language to fit your problem domain, so the program often reads out like a runnable specification.

The bigger the language (syn)tax is, the bigger will be the distance to the Domain.
(read: you will have more syntax-noise in the code).
This "noise" can help you to understand the tehnology,
but it troubles you in understanding the domain.

That's why Smalltalk is good: very simple syntax. The rest is Domain Language.

[Errata, thanks to Tom Sattlers observation]
Smalltalk is no past tense.

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