This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Piergiuliano Bossi. Original Post: Jim Freeze talking about writing DSLs in ruby Feed Title: theboxx Feed URL: http://docs.codehaus.org/dashboard.action Feed Description: Ideas, thoughts, feedback, rants and some noise about XP, agile, ruby, Fitnesse, etc. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Piergiuliano Bossi Latest Posts From theboxx

Jim Freeze has an interesting post about writing DSLs in ruby. Check What is a DSL? - O'Reilly Ruby:

The third time around, after the Ruby DSL hype had been going around for a while, I decided to use Ruby. This time, I was able to create the DSL in about five minutes. It was readable, and I was able to focus on the end users frame of reference.

The moral of this story is, don't write a mini language if you don't have too. And, don't settle for a simple DSL when a full featured one is needed. Consider extending a GPL into a DSL. Particularly an expressive language that is good at creating a readable DSL -- like Ruby.