Language workbenches—tools to define software languages together with their IDEs—are designed to simplify language engineering and implementation: they free language engineers from many meticulous tasks, but oftentimes have a very steep learning curve even for experienced software professionals. With the assumption that meta-definitions are one of the key factors that hinder language engineering, we introduce an example-driven approach to language definition. We describe in this paper our vision of a web-based tool aimed at beginner language engineers, and list possible requirements for such a tool. A language is defined by giving examples of code written in it using illustrative syntax definition. These examples are then annotated to specify different concerns of language definition—abstract syntax, typing rules, validation rules, formatting rules, and dynamic semantics.
Razan Ghzouli Chalmers University of Technology & University of Gothenburg, Thorsten Berger Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden / University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Einar Broch Johnsen University of Oslo, Swaib Dragule Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Andrzej Wąsowski IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Razan Ghzouli Chalmers University of Technology & University of Gothenburg, Thorsten Berger Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden / University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Einar Broch Johnsen University of Oslo, Swaib Dragule Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Andrzej Wąsowski IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark