"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy." Patrick Logan's weblog.

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Monday, November 06, 2006

Diesels

Ralph Johnson writes...

...the Lisp people have been making DSLs for 20 years. I learned about them about 20 years ago, and the Lisp people had been doing it for 20 years before that, so I think they have been doing it for 40 years. Neverthless, DSLs are only starting to become a hot topic.
He also recommends Martin Fowler as a source (written and seen/spoken) for more information and suggests...
These are ideas that need to become ubiquitous.

Visualizing Grammars

Nick Sieger created graphs of the grammars for Ruby, Java 1.5, and Javascript. The Ruby grammar was created from parse.y from the original C implementation. I'm not sure what he used for the other two, i.e. whether they are from "real" grammars.

Nick notices the primary node as the center of complexity for the Ruby grammar. I wonder how a more incrementally derived, top-down parser might distribute that complexity, e.g. one built for a "packrat parser".

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About Me

Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.