[Haskell-cafe] DSL question -- was: New slogan for haskell.org

[Steve Lihn]

Thanks for the explanation on DSL. It helped me understand how Haskell
works compared to other popular languages out there. It is a
programming methodology change. Or what is called paradigm change on
how to design a software with Haskell.

Haskell has its general-purpose features. Yet its strength is the
ability and ease of defining DSL by utilizing the higher order
\"stuff\" (like type class, composite function, monads, and arrows),
which to say the least, can be quite abstract and challenging.

I do come aross a question while reading the DSL page on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_programming_language

In the Disadvantage section (near the end), there is an item -- hard
or impossible to debug. Can anybody explain why or what it means? And
how does it apply to Haskell?

-- steve

On 12/11/07, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH <allbery at ece.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> > * Domain Specific Language (who needs it? other than academics and
> > Wall Streeter?)
>
> DSELs can be thought of as a programming methodology; as such, it has
> wide applicability, but most programmers don\'t think that way.  Tcl
> was originally positioned as a \"DSEL enabler\" (write composable
> functions in C, tie them together in Tcl), but most programmers
> \"don\'t get it\" and so don\'t tend to use it as such.  More recently,
> Lua seems to be using a similar philosophy with a little more success
> --- but mainly by limiting it to something which most programmers can
> deal with.  Also compare how Perl and Python monoliths have replaced
> the original Unix philosophy in which the shell is a DSEL enabler
> (composing single-function programs like \"cat\" and \"sort\").
>
> When it comes down to it, Haskell\'s strengths are only realizeable if
> you approach programming problems in a different way from most common
> languages.  It\'s a fairly big leap, and arguably Haskell won\'t
> compete well in the mainstream until more programmers have made that
> leap.
>