Re: [PhillyOnRails] help me customize my talk on DSLs in Ruby and Rails Enterprise adoption

[Aaron Blohowiak <aaron@aaronblohowiak.com>]

Some would even argue if your classes and methods are in and of  
themselves "actually" a dsl, or just a library.

I'm not one of them.

If we do decide to go with queueing theory, I think we should post  
relevant links to the wiki immediately so we can all read up before  
the next meeting.

In light of Jamis Buck's recent post (http://jamis.jamisbuck.org/ 
articles/2006/04/20/writing-domain-specific-languages ) via  
weblog.rubyonrails.org, i'd like to focus on using ruby's great  
language features as they pertain to creation of a DSL. Buck leaves  
this as an excersize to the reader. I'd like to see some basic code  
as examples of "proper use" of the following in DSLs:

procs, modules, eval, instance_eval and class_eval, define_method,  
Module#included, and method_missing

Cool.

Aaron Blohowiak

On Apr 21, 2006, at 10:56 AM, Cassius Rosenthal wrote:

> Hello Obie,
>
> My impression of DSLs has been that, as I develop a specific type  
> of application for years -- say an online CMS -- a form of DSL  
> evolves on its own.  My (or my team's) object abstractions become  
> convention and eventually take on a life of their own, with an  
> associated mini-API.
>
> At that point, creating a new application reusing the same code, or  
> the same mini-API at least, is a productive leap.  Making that  
> happen in reverse strikes me as terribly difficult, because it  
> requires so much domain-specific knowledge that a programmer might  
> not have prior to getting his/her hands dirty within the domain.   
> It's a chicken~egg problem for me.  So in your talk, I'll be  
> looking for advice on design as much as on implementation.
>
> The sales commission example sounds complex enough to be  
> interesting.  In the interest of getting the online discussion  
> going, maybe we could also look at some sort of system queue.  This  
> could apply to anything from kernel task execution to a retail  
> cashier check-out simulation.  We could look at a general case,  
> like G/G/3/infinite/fifo/infinite in Kendall notation <http:// 
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queuing_theory>.
>
> Let's take the retail check-out example.  Roughly, this would be a  
> system where customers arrived in a general distributed arrival  
> times, say 10 customers per hour; the service time is generally  
> distributed, say 4 minutes per customer; there are three cashiers;  
> there is infinite space for a waiting line; customers are served on  
> a first-in/first-out basis; and the number of potential customers  
> is infinite.
>
> For those who don't work with simulations, there are many, many  
> simulation DSLs.  The more well-known ones:
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_language>
>
> I'll be interested to see how the list responds.
>
> Thanks!
> -Cassius
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