Comparing general-purpose and domain-specific languages

an empirical study

Tomaž Kosar (Author), Nuno Oliveira (Author), Marjan Mernik (Author), Maria João Varando Pereira (Author), Matej Črepinšek (Author), Daniela Da Cruz (Author), Pedro Rangel Henriques (Author)

Abstract

Many domain-specific languages, that try to bring feasible alternatives for existing solutions while simplifying programming work, have come up in recent years. Although, these little languages seem to be easy to use, there is an open issue whether they bring advantages in comparison to the application libraries, which are the most commonly used implementation approach. In this work, we present an experiment, which was carried out to compare such a domain-specific language with a comparable application library. The experimentwas conducted with 36 programmers, who have answered a questionnaireon both implementation approaches. The questionnaire is more than100 pages long. For a domain-specific language and the application library, the same problem domain has been used - construction of graphical user interfaces. In terms of a domain-specific language, XAML has been used and C Forms for the application library. A cognitive dimension framework has been used for a comparison between XAML and C Forms.

Keywords

programiranje;programski jeziki;domensko specifični jeziki;program comprehension;DSL;domain-specific languages;program understanding;

Data

Language:	English
Year of publishing:	2010
Typology:	1.01 - Original Scientific Article
Organization:	UM FERI - Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
UDC:	004.434
COBISS:	14330902
ISSN:	1820-0214
Views:	998
Downloads:	153
Average score:	0 (0 votes)
Metadata:

Other data

Secondary language:	Slovenian
Secondary keywords:	programiranje;programski jeziki;domensko specifični jeziki;DSL;
URN:	URN:SI:UM:
Type (COBISS):	Scientific work
Pages:	Str. 247-264
Volume:	ǂVol. ǂ7
Issue:	ǂno. ǂ2
Chronology:	Apr. 2010
DOI:	10.2298/CSIS1002247K
ID:	10847139