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January 2007 Anything You Can Do, I Can Do MetaContinued from page 8 By Scott Rosenberg
Through the 1990s and into the new millennium--while Microsoft fought its wars with Netscape and the U.S. Department of Justice and rode out the dot-com bubble and bust--Simonyi and his team labored and learned. Meanwhile, beginning in 2001, Microsoft was pushing the armies of developers who wrote software for Windows to adopt a new programming system called the .Net Framework. Unlike intentional programming, .Net was finished, and it required a less radical break from existing programming techniques. Simonyi itched to take his idea out of the lab and put it in front of customers, but that was awkward under the circumstances. He explains, "It was impractical, when Microsoft was making tremendous strides with .Net in the near term, to somehow send somebody out from the same organization who says, This is not how you should do things--what if you did things in this other, more disruptive way?" Simonyi had been a company man for more than 20 years. But in 2002, he left Microsoft and launched an independent company. He walked out with a patent-cross-licensing agreement that let him use the concepts and ideas of his intentional-programming research but did not permit him to take any of his old code with him. He would have to start writing a new code base from scratch. Under the banner of his new company, Simonyi dropped the word "programming" and rebranded his project as "intentional software." The basic idea hadn't changed, but now he began to stress the approach's value to nonprogrammers. Simonyi's pitch went something like this: Today, only the programmer is able to have a direct effect on the software. "Subject matter experts" or "domain experts"--the people who actually understand what the software needs to do, whether it is medical record keeping, corporate accounting, or climate modeling--can't make changes to their tools; they're forced to "submit a sort of humble request to the programmer." Intentional Software would sell software development tools not just to programmers but to the domain experts who really knew their fields. Intentional Software's strategy borrows from a trend in programming known as "domain-specific languages" or DSLs--little programming dialects tuned to the needs of specific disciplines. Simonyi praises DSLs but says they don't go far enough. They're hard to create and therefore costly; you end up needing more than one (for a medical billing system, you'd need at least a medical and a financial language); and they're incompatible with one another. Intentional Software's system is like a factory for multiple DSLs that can talk to one another. Here's how it might work: Suppose an international bank wanted to develop a new system for managing transactions in multiple currencies. First, the bank's own domain experts would define the system's functionality, using their customary terms and symbols and identifying the most important variables ("time" or "value" or "size of transaction") and the most common procedures ("convert holdings from one currency to another" or "purchase hedge against falling value"). Then the programmers would take that information and build a "domain specific" program generator that embodies that information. A separate software tool would allow the domain experts to experiment with different sets of data and ways to view that data as easily as businesspeople today rearrange their spreadsheets. |
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IBM's Symphony for the Office Worker
09/28/2007
Comments
rajuch on 02/07/2007 at 11:38 AM
1
How does it solve the software updates problem? What would happen, if they need to change some features six month from the installation? Can we put the bench back in the machine to refine the bench, or do we need to start over and pay for full new bench? Many online applications are being updated every other month.
If one needs to build a computer table or wooden cabinet, can he use that bench-making machine? Or does he need to build a new machine for each kind of products? I am not joking. You would agree, if you read the following.
We already invented such machines for building online-GUI-applications. Greatly appreciate your feedback, what you think about our online GUI application making machine. Please review brief overview to our application machine:
http://cbsdf.com/technologies/software-irony.htm
Each ‘Component Factory’ in the left side of the Figure#1 acts as a knob, to refine each part (i.e. a loosely coupled component/AC) in the application (shown right side). Please review the following WebPages, which show that this process builds perfect ‘application machine’ with simple to operate knobs to refine each part. Please review summary at the end to understand why it cost only a fraction to refine the application:
http://cbsdf.com/ps_blog/Minimum-couplings.htm
http://cbsdf.com/ps_blog/super-distribution.htm
P.S: Of course, one must use our highly-flexible online-GUI-API to build the online GUI components. You may see interactive GUI Components, which are built using SVG. We will be building the GUI Classes for XAML/Vista in the future.
http://cbsdf.com/technologies/demo-links/Demo-SVGS/misc-charts.html
More sample links at: http://cbsdf.com/technologies/demo-links/demo-links.htm
One may build his own custom GUI Classes, for example, to build multi-player online games or near real-time modeling of Air-traffic, as explained at:
http://cbsdf.com/Newbies/Flight-main.htm
http://cbsdf.com/misc_docs/online-apps-rock.htm
Best Regards,
Raju
sriramv.iyer on 02/13/2007 at 4:59 AM
1
But this article did rekindle my interest in DSLs. (I use python and not lisp, though)
rubs74 on 02/22/2007 at 5:27 PM
1
Model Driven Architecture also adds a new level of abstracction to software development and I guess that takes the base idea of Intentional Programming as well. There are already tools that work on production. Here there's a tool based on MDA that really allows you to think more about the bussiness logic and less about the complexities of building it, just take a look http://www.care-t.com/
JEfromCanada on 03/09/2007 at 3:10 PM
1
bushka on 03/14/2007 at 5:55 PM
1
oscarbhaskar on 06/13/2007 at 10:11 AM
1
The question now is how do we implement the concept? How do we capture the "Intention"?
I think we are about to see a new dimension in the way software is developed.
enterprise on 06/30/2007 at 2:45 PM
1
By Christmas.
We will make sure the writers of this excellent article know in good time.
In the meantime, if you want to be involved with the fun, get in touch on gedymail@gmail.com
GD
Corbier on 12/25/2007 at 2:02 PM
4
For a quick glance at what a language definition file might look like, check out:
www.ucalc.com/lisp.txt (Lisp)
www.ucalc.com/forth.txt (Forth)
The download includes more files like this, which you can load up into the generic interpreter, at which point it becomes an interpreter for the language you just loaded. (The supplied interpreter demonstrates just one possible kind of interface. You can create your own fancy interface to interpret such code).
uCalc LB is no longer in the idea stage. An actual fully working beta implementation can be downloaded.
I am the author of uCalc Language Builder (as well as uCalc Fast Math Parser), and I am looking for early adopters of the uCalc LB technology. An interactive tutorial that comes with the download can walk you trough the various concepts. Other forms of documentation are also included, as well as an interactive interpreter.
--
Daniel Corbier
www.ucalc.com