Ridiculous Thoughts

I've updated the abstract for my RailsConf talk. There's a talk immediately after mine that is going to focus on the details of implementing a Domain Specific Language in Ruby. Therefore, I'm going to talk at a little higher level about designing and using a DSL. Leave me some feedback if you have thoughts on this.

Domain Specific Languages as Rails Plugins

“Reuse is Vastly Overrated”—DHH 1/21/2006.

Reuse of business logic between applications is difficult. By definition business logic is what distinguishes one business from another and one application from another. However, DSL’s might provide a reusable context to describe business rules within a domain. The DSL provides a middle ground between impractical or constraining reuse and laborious coding from scratch.

In this talk we will look at the usage of some common Rails DSLs and the design of a new DSL for managing randomness in hobby/adventure game apps. We will end with some discussion of packing DSLs as plugins, pitfalls of DSLs and common domains in Rails that need DSL plugins.

Steve