Do people build things using little languages any more?

Path	csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end
From	Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Do people build things using little languages any more?
Date	Mon, 4 Jul 2022 14:11:03 +0000
Organization	Compilers Central
Lines	29
Sender	news@iecc.com
Approved	comp.compilers@iecc.com
Message-ID	<22-07-002@comp.compilers> (permalink)
Mime-Version	1.0
Content-Type	text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding	8bit
Injection-Info	gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="29128"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com"
Keywords	design, question
Posted-Date	04 Jul 2022 13:31:21 EDT
X-submission-address	compilers@iecc.com
X-moderator-address	compilers-request@iecc.com
X-FAQ-and-archives	http://compilers.iecc.com
Accept-Language	en-US
Content-Language	en-US
Xref	csiph.com comp.compilers:3107

Show key headers only | View raw

Hi Folks,

I am reading the "Little Languages and Tools" book. (I can't remember who, on
this list, recommended the book, but whoever it was thank you! It is an
awesome book!)

The first chapter was written by Jon Bentley. Incredible writer! The thing
that struck me most from reading his chapter is that writing little tools
(using little languages such as AWK, Lex, Yacc, pic (picture language),
scatter (scatter plot language), troff, sed) and then assembling them together
via pipes, e.g.,

	scatter infile | pic | troff >outfile

is a powerful way to quickly get robust tools implemented.

My impression is that this style of development is no longer in vogue. Today's
developers want to use big languages like Java and Python and implement large,
monolithic tools/application.

That's sad.

To my way of thinking the old style of development is far superior.

But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps today's developers are implementing
tools/applications using the old style. What say you? Do you use the old style
of implementing tools/applications?

/Roger

Back to comp.compilers | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Do people build things using little languages any more? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-07-04 14:11 +0000
  Re: Do people build things using little languages any more? Kaz Kylheku <480-992-1380@kylheku.com> - 2022-07-05 01:57 +0000

csiph-web