Quoted: Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort:

Quoted: Clojure is a dynamic programming language that targets the Java Virtual Machine. It is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming.

click to play

Interesting talk on building DSL (domain specific languages) in Eclipse - using the XText project. The goals seem very similar to intentional programming.

Quoted: Talk by Peter Friese, itemis.Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) are becoming more and more popular, allowing developers to express their intent more precisely ...

Quoted: ANTLR: ANother Tool for Language Recognition, (formerly PCCTS) is a language tool that provides a framework for constructing recognizers, compilers, and translators from grammatical descriptions containing Java, C#, C++, or Python actions.

We' using this ADSL/2 router as a stop-gap until Seakeasy replaces our ADSL/2 modem. Problem is I can't figure out how to route static IP's through this router - it normally acts as a Firewall with NAT. But even turning off NAT I don't know how to create the needed routing table entries.

In the broadest sense, any "application" defines a DSL - it translates user input into desired output; so in a sense, typing letters into a word processor (or certainly formulas into a spreadsheet) is a form of programming. It is just abstracted at a different level, and targeted at a specific problem domain.

Intentional Software is designing a system to enable users to work in the domain of what Charles Simonyi is calling "Problem Languages" (really, DSL's). IP lets programmers operate in the space between the DSL and translations to executable program representations.

I think, in a sense, an IP programmer is writing something very much like an interpreter or compiler, but with lots of built in support and tools for writing his translations.

Talked with Charles Simonyi yesterday. He mentioned the notion that "4GL" is "discredited"; i.e., the approach of creating a "higher level" language for the creation of applications in specific problem domains.

I certainly would agree that there have been many dead ends here. But also, some bug successes. I note that Ruby on Rails is referenced here as a 4GL.

Intentional Programming differs in that it has "Gone Meta" one more step in providing a framework for building Domain Specific Languages (DSL) that can be applied to any domain.

The next big thing in programming tools? Could very well be. Charles Simonyi has been working on ideas surrounding a re-design of the whole programming methodology to capture problem domain information that is much more easily repurposed and compiled into specific problem implementations. These are BIG ideas and well worth understanding - though the software offering itself was delayed when Charless took a reset by taking his ideas outside of Microsoft and creating his own company.