5,867 research outputs found
From Macros to DSLs: The Evolution of Racket
The Racket language promotes a language-oriented style of programming. Developers create many domain-specific languages, write programs in them, and compose these programs via Racket code. This style of programming can work only if creating and composing little languages is simple and effective. While Racket\u27s Lisp heritage might suggest that macros suffice, its design team discovered significant shortcomings and had to improve them in many ways. This paper presents the evolution of Racket\u27s macro system, including a false start, and assesses its current state
The Racket Manifesto
The creation of a programming language calls for guiding principles that point the developers to goals. This article spells out the three basic principles behind the 20-year development of Racket. First, programming is about stating and solving problems, and this activity normally takes place in a context with its own language of discourse; good programmers ought to formulate this language as a programming language. Hence, Racket is a programming language for creating new programming languages. Second, by following this language-oriented approach to programming, systems become multi-lingual collections of interconnected components. Each language and component must be able to protect its specific invariants. In support, Racket offers protection mechanisms to implement a full language spectrum, from C-level bit manipulation to soundly typed extensions. Third, because Racket considers programming as problem solving in the correct language, Racket also turns extra-linguistic mechanisms into linguistic constructs, especially mechanisms for managing resources and projects. The paper explains these principles and how Racket lives up to them, presents the evaluation framework behind the design process, and concludes with a sketch of Racket\u27s imperfections and opportunities for future improvements
Constraining application behaviour by generating languages
Writing a platform for reactive applications which enforces operational
constraints is difficult, and has been approached in various ways. In this
experience report, we detail an approach using an embedded DSL which can be
used to specify the structure and permissions of a program in a given
application domain. Once the developer has specified which components an
application will consist of, and which permissions each one needs, the
specification itself evaluates to a new, tailored, language. The final
implementation of the application is then written in this specialised
environment where precisely the API calls associated with the permissions which
have been granted, are made available.
Our prototype platform targets the domain of mobile computing, and is
implemented using Racket. It demonstrates resource access control (e.g.,
camera, address book, etc.) and tries to prevent leaking of private data.
Racket is shown to be an extremely effective platform for designing new
programming languages and their run-time libraries. We demonstrate that this
approach allows reuse of an inter-component communication layer, is convenient
for the application developer because it provides high-level building blocks to
structure the application, and provides increased control to the platform
owner, preventing certain classes of errors by the developer.Comment: 8 pages, 8th European Lisp Symposiu
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