Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:55:58 +0100 Subject: 23 November 2012, 11:00, L017: Jeroen van den Bos. A Little Language: Little Maintenance? From: Vadim Zaytsev To: PEM Dear environmentalists, Following the recent email by Tijs, the next PEM Colloquium is dedicated to the most recently submitted paper by Jeroen van den Bos and Tijs van der Storm, called “A Little Language: Little Maintenance? An Experiment in Digital Forensics”. Jeroen will most probably explain the title, but I want to remind you anyway that it alludes to the paper called “Little Languages: Little Maintenance?” that Paul Klint has written quite some years back together with Arie van Deursen (an ex-SWAT-ter): http://bit.ly/T1pJlO Interestingly, the talk concerning that paper, was given at this very PEM Colloquium almost exactly 15 years ago, on 27 November 1997. Prooflink: http://event.cwi.nl/pem/1997/1997-11-27-van-Deursen.txt The term “little language” itself dates back to 1986, to one of the first papers ever proclaiming the usefulness of DSLs, by Jon Bentley: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/6424.315691 (which is almost never cited nowadays). Date: 23 November 2012 Time: 11:00-12:00 Room: L017 Speaker: Jeroen van den Bos Title: A Little Language: Little Maintenance? Abstract: see below ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A Little Language: Little Maintenance? Domain-specific languages (DSLs) can significantly increase productivity and quality in software construction. However, even DSL programs need to evolve to accommodate changing requirements and circumstances. How can we know if the design of a DSL supports the relevant evolution scenarios on its programs? An experimental approach is presented which addresses this question by simulating maintenance in practice. We apply this approach to evaluate the evolutionary capabilities of a DSL for digital forensics, called DERRIC. The results indicate that the majority of required changes to DERRIC programs are indeed easily expressed. However two evolution scenarios suggest that the language design could be improved to prevent maintenance problems in the future. We conclude that our experimental approach provides valuable data for evidence-based language evolution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- http://event.cwi.nl/pem/calendar.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yours, Vadim.