Re: dual-language systems increase modularity

[Daniel Pinto de Mello e Silva <address@hidden>]

On Sun, 2003-11-16 at 09:58, Vadim Nasardinov wrote:
> One of the things the recent LL3 workshop made me think about is the
> practical utility and usefulness of embedding a scripting language in
> an application.  Roberto Ierusalimschy gave a talk about the Lua 5.0
> VM[1].  The language was designed to be easily embeddable and is
> currently used by major gaming studios to script their games.  It is
> also used to control other kinds of application, such as the C--
> compiler described by Norman Ramsey[2].  Ramsey says,
> 
>     Using an embedded, interpreted language to control a complicated
>     application can have significant software-engineering benefits.
> 
> What exactly are those benefits?  I think one of the possible answers
> to this question was provided by Dan Sugalski's hand waving in his
> talk about boundaries[3].

Ugh.

> [...]
> Shriram said at the workshop that his big question was, how do you go
> "from scripts to programs"?
> 
> My question is, how do you go from programs to scripts?  Is it useful
> to explicitly adopt a dual-language architecture as a way to achieve
> greater modularity?

You might think of every program in that scenario as a server or a set
of services.  Your users will certainly appreciate it.

Are you familiar with DCOP and Qt/KDE application hooks through it? 
Fire up a KDE session and run kdcop; you might be pleasantly surprised.

- Daniel