Question

I heard from someone that DSL is really powerful in some specific fields. So i want to find out if i can put it into my skill sets.

The first problem came out is What is DSL exactly? After doing some search, it seems Groovy supports DSL very well. Then i go and read Groovy’s documents and try it out by myself.

And i got the impression that DSL is just some kind of configuration files consisting of texts, XMLs and you use some tools like Groovy to parse it, it magically become some methods or functions you can invoke. What happened?

I read something, but cannot get it straight. Any Help?

Answer 1

Did you read this? Martin Fowler is an authority on the subject and a great writer. I doubt that anyone will improve on the first paragraph. If you still don’t get it, give it some time and re-read the article a few times.

I’d recommend looking into JetBrain’s MPS

A book might be overwhelming, but there’s a relatively new one available.

And i got the impression that DSL is just some kind of configuration
files consisting of texts, XMLs and you use some tools like Groovy to
parse it, it magically become some methods or functions you can
invoke. What happened?

I don’t think your impression is entirely accurate. I’d forget about Groovy and parsing and all the implementation details for now. Focus on the problem that DSL is trying to solve.

A DSL designer tries to come up with a pseudo programming language that an expert, who is unfamilar with programming languages like Groovy or Java or C#, would recognize as a simple language describing they way they solve problems.

The DSL uses terms and concepts familiar to any one knowledgable about that domain.

The DSL shields users from the underlying implementation details so they can focus on how to attack their problems.

A DSL is written for the convenience of business users, not developers.

Keep that in mind and the rest is implementation. Eye on the prize….