Archive for 27th January 2009

Perfect metaphor for language design

Paul Vick nails it:

[W]riting a new language, domain-specific or not, is a lot like opening a restaurant: everyone thinks they can do it because they’ve eaten at one and it looks like fun.

via DSLs: Definitely a bad idea! .

He’s getting some heat in the comments for his intentionally-provocative title, but  I think he’s exactly right — most languages, whether domain-specific or not, turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth. (I would say “die” but domain-specific languages tend to become undead — unkillable beings whose origins are lost in the mists of time. How’s that for a mixed metaphor? DSLs are restaurants that turn into vampires.)

Broken Links resulting from WordPress Conversion

Pretty much every link on my site was rewritten by Das Blog for logging purposes. The conversion to Word Press has broken all of those. I am going to have to write a utility to convert them and I won’t be able to get to that for several days at best.

Sorry for the continued inconvenience…