Knowledge has no constraints.

My name is Sebastian Günther. On these pages, I show my portfolio about research and programming. You can read posts of my research into domain-specific languages and language design, as well as technical articles about web applications with Ruby Rails, Sinatra, and Rack. Enjoy your time on my webpage!

Sebastian Günther, August 2011

I'm a Researcher in domain-specific languages and language design, a Programmer of web applications and mobile applications, and passionate about Productivity. I love to help other people in Empowering themselves, and I'm a frequent Athlete as well as a dedicated Reader of fiction and non-fiction books.

Research

Pursuing the craft of simplifying programming, I'm researching how to build and utilize domain-specific languages. I'm also interested into metaprogramming and software paradigms, such as features, contexts, and aspects. The grand challenge is to identify how to manage software variability.

Programming

Ubiquitous web applications and mobile applications permeate our everyday life. They help us organizing, socializing, and sometimes even surviving. Do you understand the soup HTML, CSS, AJAX, HAML, SASS, Compass, Bundler, Rake? Then you are welcome to follow my technical traits.

Productivity

Goals, projects, to do's - simple enough, but does it scale? I follow the Getting Things Done method by David Allen. Its simple: Put all your eminent and future to do's on a list, add whenever you need to add, and review them regularly. Then get the stuff done.

Seamless Constructor Pattern

22-12-2011 | DSL Pattern | DSL, Patterns, Notation Patterns, Ruby

In languages with an object-oriented core, the creation of new objects is typically expressed with keywords like new. In a DSL, using this keyword explicitly may not be intended, especially not when the keyword has another, domain-specific meaning. More desirable is the behavior that an expression automatically instantiates an object,...

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Method Chaining Pattern

12-12-2011 | DSL Pattern | DSL, Patterns, Notation Patterns, Ruby

In some domains, expressions involve a high number of concepts and operations. For example in financial transactions, accounts, identification numbers, currency information, stock information and more need to be expressed. This complexity should be reflected in the DSL too.

But, do you use too much command-like expressions that fail...

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Keyword Arguments Pattern

10-12-2011 | DSL Patterns | DSL, Patterns, Notation Patterns, Ruby

Methods implement the behavior of a DSL. They are vital language expressions and communicate much of the DSL's intention.

But does your DSL suffer from passing to many arguments to functions, confusing the user about the argument's meaning and order?

Because the order of arguments is...

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