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Gramada: immediacy in programming language development

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Published:20 October 2016Publication History

ABSTRACT

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) improve software maintainability and programmer productivity by making domain concepts more explicit in the code. However, developing syntax and semantics of DSLs is often challenging and as a result developers seldom take advantage of the benefits of DSLs. One way to lower the entry barrier to DSL development is to give developers immediate and continuous feedback on modifications to a language. We propose Gramada, an environment for developing DSLs in Squeak/Smalltalk which is designed to provide such a live programming experience. It is based on a language development framework with additional support for incremental compilation to improve system response times and a set of tools which creates a steady frame and allows programmers to quickly explore changes to the syntax of a language. Our benchmarks and discussion illustrate how Gramada can give visual feedback on most changes to the language in a way that supports live programming. We conclude that Gramada’s feedback is fast and consistent enough to make exploring the effects of changes a lively and productive activity during the interactive development of DSLs.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Conferences
      Onward! 2016: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software
      October 2016
      268 pages
      ISBN:9781450340762
      DOI:10.1145/2986012

      Copyright © 2016 ACM

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      Publication History

      • Published: 20 October 2016

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