From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2009-02-17T22:17:50+09:00
Subject: Re: What are your favorite Ruby features?

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On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 9:59 PM, David A. Black <dblack@rubypal.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Tony Arcieri wrote:
>
>
>
>> This is another case of overlap... the "English-like readability" bit
>> typically plays into DSLs which use English words and generally try to
>> make
>> your code read more like a natural language (e.g. RSpec)
>>
>> I certainly understand that people can like optional parens for other
>> reasons but DSLs are one particularly compelling use case for them, I
>> believe.
>>
>
> I know people sometimes bundle the concept of DSL and the idea of
> sounding like English together (with mixed success, usually, in my
> view), but "domain-specific" doesn't really imply emulation of natural
> language; it just implies a particular well-defined emergent notation
> based on a subset of (computer) language constructs. At least, that's
> how I see it.
>

Yes, I agree.  In fact I could argue that:

   Fortran is an example of an early DSL for the Domain of numerical
algorithms
and
  APL or at least a large subset, is an example of a DSL for matrix and
vector manipulation

Neither of these is particularly English like, in the second case not even
remotely.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale

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