[Haskell-cafe] What *is* a DSL?

[Dan Piponi]

2009/10/7 Joe Fredette <jfredett at gmail.com>:
> Let me add to this, as I've used the term "DSL" without (*gasp*) fully
> understanding it before.
>
> In addition to "What is a DSL", I'd like to ask:
>
> "How is a DSL different from an API?"

I don't think there is a sharp divide here. A nice example was given
by Pat Hanrahan at the recent nvidia GPU conference. He proposed the
idea that OpenGL was a DSL. His reasoning was that he could give a
formal grammar that accurately captured the structure of many
fragments of code making calls to OpenGL. For example you have blocks
of code bracketed by glBegin() and glEnd() with sequences of
primitives in between. In fact, some people indent their code to
reflect this structure as if glBegin() and glEnd() were control
structures within the host language.

I've argued that every monad gives a DSL. They all have the same
syntax - do-notation, but each choice of monad gives quite different
semantics for this notation. For example the list monad gives a DSL
for non-determinism.
--
Dan