06/10/2009 04:24:58 AM EST

The "view it here" phrase doesn't include a link when I view the article with IE - should it? I'm intrigued to see the presentation because it's hard to get my head around how having multiple grammars to learn (no matter how simplified) will make programming tasks easier. I know many programming/scripting languages. For me, the easier ones are like C#, JavaScript and PHP which share a syntax structure. VB is harder for me. But they are all difficult because their object models are different, differences which reflect their domain specialisms. These differences are not going to go away. It is still important to understand the DOM when using JavaScript and HTML when using PHP. I recently watched the M video showing the DSL 'Murl' created using Microsoft's M, part of the Oslo project. Murl is an M implementation of Curl. But unless you appreciated why Curl exists the benefit of the Murl DSL was not so obvious. Really they'd created a limited grammar that was not more intelligible to the newbie than the options for any other command line tool. That's because there's an implicit assumption that other know the target domain well and share the same mental model of that domain as the DSL author. In my experience, that doesn't happen often. The Java and .NET object models share much in common because they are based on a common understanding of programming fundamentals. Using some other object model is a recipe for time on the sideline, not because the object model is poor but because the model is not familiar (which could mean difficult and alien).

United KingdomBill

06/15/2009 06:42:33 PM EST

The URL should _definitely_ be visible in IE; I don't know why you're having trouble. Although I agree with all your logic, what I perhaps failed to communicate was that the syntax of a projectional editor is (a) often graphical and (b) presumably part of the domain-expert's area. So although it's true that you're introducing multiple syntaxes (and at some level complicating things), the hope is that by minimizing the distance between the expert and the specification of logic, you get a net win.

United StatesLarry O'Brien