On 23 October, Tijs van der Storm (CWI and RUG) received the Most Influential Paper Award of the 2023 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE) on behalf of a team of 20+ authors, for the paper ‘The State of the Art in Language Workbenches’ from 2013. The SLE MIP Award distinguishes authors of a paper published at SLE 10 years prior to the award year that has seen the greatest impact in the field of language engineering. The winning paper provides a detailed survey and analysis of language workbenches at the time, both from industry as well as academia. A follow-up journal paper extended the work with a list of future challenges to compare features between language workbenches.
Language Workbenches
Language workbenches are used for the efficient construction of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs): computer languages tailored to a specific application domain, with which you can solve some problems very efficiently and effectively. DSL programmers are able to specify software solutions with an emphasis on what is needed, rather than instructing a computer how to achieve the result. This leads to fewer errors. However, developing a good DSL takes a lot of effort. Sometimes described as ‘compiler compilers on steroids’, language workbenches support all aspects of language development with powerful tools. By automating many aspects, they leave more time for language design, where the real challenge lies. With them, a first prototype can often be ready in a week instead of months.
