The EBNF is the most commonly used formalism to describe the structure of languages. In this article we are going to see: What the EBNF Examples of grammars defined with EBNF How we can define a grammar using EBNF A few things to consider when using EBNF How to use EBNF in practice today A summary […]
Code is arguably the most valuable asset for many organizations. However the value trapped in the code is not easy to use. Why? In this article we are going to see how we can extract and process knowledge in code by specifying patterns. We will see: A clear example of what we mean by extracting […]
There are consolidated habits that have a negative effect when doing consulting. Lately I have been thinking about how things work during the initial contacts between a client and a consultant: the initial discussion that happens between them, before a contract is signed. Typically the consultant does two things: On one hand he tends to enfatically […]
This guide will show you: the what: after a definition we will look into 19 examples of DSLs the why: what are the concrete benefits you can achieve using DSLs the how: we will discuss the different ways to build a DSLs and what are the success factors After that you will get a list […]
Thorsten Ball is the author of the book Writing an Interpreter in Go. I recently found out about his book and I reached out to him to ask a few questions about his ideas on creating programming languages, writing a book and discuss his approach. Let’s meet Thorsten Hi Thorsten can you start by telling us […]
In the past years, and in the last 12 months in particular I wrote tens of posts, some of which got a good response from you (thank you!). I thought it could be useful to create a list of the most relevant posts for each topic. It could help in particular new readers. ANTLR […]
When building a language there is one aspect which is absolutely crucial: that is tool support. Tool support will determine if your language is usable at all, it will influence the reception from user and the usability. In this video I explain why and how you can build great tool support with a limited effort. […]
A lot of people are using JavaParser for the most different goals. One of these is extracting documentation. In this short post we will see how you can print all the JavaDoc comments associated to classes or interfaces. Code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/ftomassetti/javadoc-extractor Getting all the Javadoc comments for classes We are reusing DirExplorer, […]
What is an editor? An editor is, for me, the main tool I use for work. As a Language Engineer I create new languages, I use existing ones and I need different tools to work with them. I would like to be able to hack all of them together, in a customized IDE I can […]
If you read this blog you will know that I strongly believe in the power of languages. So I am very biased, of course, but I have the feeling that the Language Engineering community is growing and more interesting stuff is coming up. For this I thought it was a good idea to finish the […]