DSLs in Boo: Domain Specific Languages in .NET [Paperback]

Ayende Rahien (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2010

A general-purpose language like C# is designed to handle all programming tasks. By contrast, the structure and syntax of a Domain-Specific Language are designed to match a particular applications area. A DSL is designed for readability and easy programming of repeating problems. Using the innovative Boo language, it's a breeze to create a DSL for your application domain that works on .NET and does not sacrifice performance.

DSLs in Boo shows you how to design, extend, and evolve DSLs for .NET by focusing on approaches and patterns. You learn to define an app in terms that match the domain, and to use Boo to build DSLs that generate efficient executables. And you won't deal with the awkward XML-laden syntax many DSLs require. The book concentrates on writing internal (textual) DSLs that allow easy extensibility of the application and framework. And if you don't know Boo, don't worry-you'll learn right here all the techniques you need.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A leader in the .NET community, Ayende Rahien, whose real name is Oren Eini, contributes to numerous open-source projects including NHibernate, Castle, and Rhino Mocks. He blogs and speaks on architecture, data access, testing, and other topics.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications; Pap/Pas edition (January 28, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933988606
• ISBN-13: 978-1933988603
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent DSL cookbook for .NET developers, October 6, 2010

By 

Juan Gomez (Overland Park, KS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: DSLs in Boo: Domain Specific Languages in .NET (Paperback)

DSLs are taking the enterprise world by storm, and if you're not prepared for them, you are going to be missing out on all the productivity benefits.

Don't get scared away by the Boo name on the cover. Boo is a CLR (.NET) language with access to all the great features you know and love about .NET, it just happens to be better suited for more "expressive" DSLs than say C# or VB but you still get all the power of the .NET framework plus a more elegant syntax and flexibilities to tap into the compiler and enhance the language.

As you might have guessed, this book is not for beginners on .NET or newcommers to DSLs, if you want to capture the theory I advice you to first read Martin Fowler's book Domain-Specific Languages (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) and then come back to this one. Don't get me wrong this book does give you the "essence" of DSLs too, but there's a lot of heavy details that you *should* know, before you even attempt implementing a DSL and this book won't be giving you those.

The greatest thing about this book is that it doesn't just tell you how to build a DSL in .NET, it explains how to build different kinds of DSLs depending on the business needs and walks you through how to implement a whole infrastructure to design, produce, support and maintain multiple DSLs successfully thought-out the life-cycle of your projects.

If you want to get the *full* benefits of DSLs in a .NET enterprise environment you have to read this book!