In 2002 I got interested in the ORM problem. I have read every single piece on the topic I could find and tried tons of solutions, from early TopLink and Hibernate builds to Prevayler. During the process, the problem itself became not that interesting anymore. The Object-Orientation literature had so many cool topics that I started reading and researching about whole paradigm, not that specific bit. Six years later I think I’ve got a good set of information on the topic, at least sufficient knowledge to develop decent OO software.

During that learning I faced many concepts that were new to me. In 2004 a book by Eric Raymond on how UNIX programs are designed gave me some basic information on Domain-Specific Languages, those little languages that we’ve being using to configure UNIX systems for a long while without even noticing.

I followed the few references I could find about the topic but I got no big picture until I read Martin Fowler’s article on Language Workbenches. Since then I’ve been reading and trying a lot the topics on Language-Oriented Programming and Domain-Specific Languages.

These pages are about what I’m learning on the subject. I hope putting my notes and findings online will help people that are wondering about how these topics will change the future. Or not. Don’t expect clear and final answers here, texts and pages will be changing the more I learn about this whole mess.

If you have any comments please fell free to drop me an email at pcalcado gmail.com.