nLab domain specific programming language

Idea

A programming language is called domain specific if it is designed for a specific kind (domain) of applications, in contrast to general purpose programming languages.

If a domain specific language is realized inside a general-purpose language, one speaks of domain specific embedded programming language.

Examples

• Many existing quantum programming languages are actually domain-specific languages for the description of quantum circuits, and as such many are embedded (see there for more).

References

General

• Wikipedia, Domain specific language

• Haskell Wiki, Research papers/Domain specific languages

Examples

For differential equations:

• Martin S. Alnaes, Anders Logg, Kristian B. Oelgaard, Marie E. Rognes, Garth N. Wells, Unified Form Language: A domain-specific language for weak formulations of partial differential equations (arXiv:1211.4047)

References

• Paul Hudak, Building Domain-Specific Embedded Languages, ACM Computing Surveys 28 4e (1996) 196–es [doi:10.1145/242224.242477, web]

• Paul Hudak, Domain Specific Languages, Chapter 3 (pp. 39–60) in: Peter H. Salas (ed), Handbook of Programming Languages, Vol. III: Little Languages and Tools, MacMillan (1998) [pdf, pdf]

• Paul Hudak, Modular Domain Specific Languages and Tools, in: Proceedings of Fifth International Conference on Software Reuse, IEEE Computer Society Press (1998) [pdf, doi:10.5555/551789.853532]