On Nov 6, 2007 8:52 PM, Dan Kearns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 11/6/07, Tammo van Lessen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Dan, of course you may use JavaScript or Java or whatever to express
> > BPs, but then BP's root-concepts like scopes and concurrency must be
> > based on native language concepts like threads and transaction
> > managers and are neither easy to read nor first-class citizens anymore
> > - which is at least for me the key of such a DSL.
>
>
> That's not the case at all. Calling it a dsl means you are decoupling the
> syntax from the original platform, implementation and constraints.
>
> The question when reusing an existing syntax is how much the resulting
> behavior matches the author's expectations, ie how much learning curve did
> it cut out (vs how much irritation did it add by not being the language it
> resembles).
>
Actually we've been pretty careful at not introducing semantic conflicts
with some Javascript syntax. The thing has a Javascript feeling just to give
a sense of familiarity and be nice to our eyes used to parse
C/C++/Java/Javascript types of syntaxes. But I don't think there's any
chance of somebody looking at a SimPEL program and mistaking it for
Javascript, as a whole it's very different and we certainly won't advocate
it as being Javascript for processes.
>
> > For the AAM proposal, we have no intent of bringing process engines to
> > > JavaScript, but bringing a simpler syntaxt to the process engine, and
> we
> > > just think JavaScript is a good starting point for that.
>
>
> That's fine. I don't want to flog the javascript thing to death, and this
> thread is probably now a good enough example of the danger of making the
> dsl
> *look* like javascript. ;-)
>
Again it derives some syntax elements from Javascript in the same way that
Java derived its syntax from C++. But I don't think there's any chance of
mistaking one for the other, especially with something that starts with
"process foo { ... }". But if you see some constructs that look confusing,
you're more than welcome to point them out and suggest improvements.
Cheers,
Matthieu
>
> -d
>
