Friday, May 02, 2008

Domain Specific Language, or why people think I'm a genius

Let me specify right off the bat... I don't think I'm a genius.

However, when I begin to tell most people about what I do for work, their eyes glaze over, and their heart-rate slows to near-death levels. It seems overly complex to them.

Now, I'm not saying just anybody can walk into my office and take over what I do. I'm just saying that once you get over a few basic hurdles, I'm simply a problem solver.

The main hurdle is terminology. Not just learning what certain words or phrases mean, but what they mean at different times.

It may have been said, 'My home is my Domain', or some such thing. Most people wouldn't think of using the word Domain today, but if they did, they would likely think of an area they had control of. (Don't glaze over just yet.)

In the IT world, a domain would refer to a collection of computers networked and protected together.

But if you were to start coding, and happened to look at something like Monorail .Net you may run into the term Domain. Now what are we talking about?

See, that's the thing. Phrases are used loosely at times in the computer world, and using these phrases or words may confuse people who don't catch the context you are using it for.

How many people thought JavaScript has something to do with Java. And we don't mean the island, the town, the Russian cigarette brand, or coffee!

If people could understand what we were talking about, they'd be able to understand what we're talking about. Though they might not think of us as geniuses any more.

So, for those of us who may need to add a definition to our collection for Domain, here's a nice article from that nifty Wiki WikiPedia.org.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Specific_Language

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