Ben Scofield: Cleanliness Is Next to Domain Specificity

Kevin — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:58:00 -0700

I. Linguistics

We are programming languages – they can certainly be compared to natural languages
Regional dialects are crazy. Can I get a coke? Pop is delicious.
Jargons and cants differ not in grammar but in vocabulary. Hmmm.
Creoles and pigeons differ in both grammar and vocabulary from their parent languages
Getting back to ruby, are domain specific languages (DSLs) really languages? Or are they dialects, or something else?
DSLs are really just about changing the words we use
Linguistic determinism is crap
The eskimos do not have 33 billion words for snow. For one, “the eskimos” is not one group of people with one language. Additionally, there may be lots of snow-related words in any given native alaskan language; however, there are lots of snow-related words in English as well.
Tests are testing something that is already there. Specifications come before something else – this leads you in the right – or at least the test first – direction

II. Refactoring

He showed a bit of shit code to get flight information from kayak and refactored it into a class with a more readable API
Use symbols instead of strings to avoid using quotes everywhere
Avoid parens when that makes things more readable
We will never model the domain exactly, so there is always room for improvement

Cool talk!

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