Scott Bellware wrote yesterday on disambiguating fluent interfaces (aka APIs) from domain-specific languages. Rant aside it's an interesting read. Something, however, gave me a chuckle: Scott says:
"At some point in the near future, Microsoft will tell the .NET mainstream that DSL's are visual, that they are drag-and-drop, and that they require a new plug-in to Visual Studio in order to make them and use them."
Hummmm..... sorry to say this Scott, but they already did a couple of years ago :-). I think it started with the whole Software Factories [1] idea that Microsoft pushed some time ago.
I must say, though, that I don't hold any grudges to the idea of Visual DSLs. In fact, they can be very useful tools both to create and visualize software. The problem appears when a) they are not the most productive way of working either because of limitations in the visual language itself, or b) because of poor implementation. The Windows Workflow Foundation Designer strikes me as an example of a concept where the visual thing works very well, though it has an unfortunate implementation (it's slow as molasses, almost unbearable to use at times!).
For many of these tools, what I'd really like to have is the best of both worlds: Having a visual experience can be very useful, but having a productive, effective and efficient textual dsl is, to me, a core requirement. Despite what some people might think, writing text is still a far more efficient means of writing software if you have the right language at your disposal.
[1] I think the Software Factories idea has some good merits as a conceptual concept and vision, but it was unfortunately named (and I believe the term has made substantial damage to our software industry, by the way).
