Do fish have legs: language design for the commercial coder

Software these days is often broken up into multiple components; servers, client, microservices which all need to talk to each other. As the components we design get more complicated, the communication between each component needs to become more expressive. Taking inspiration from lambda calculus, type theory and Lisp, we'll explore how we can make use of a tool which we often don't reach for in programming; creating domain-specific languages for the purposes of communication.

OBJECTIVES

This is based on a talk which Yilin gave at LSUG earlier this year. It was an (introductory) talk on simply typed lambda calculus and how to extend type systems disguised as a talk on implementing a query language. The title is tongue in cheek since the topics which are covered are often seen as esoteric and impractical to most industrial programmers. However, Yilin will demonstrate that this is not the case and present language design as a viable tool for industry.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Industry programmers