Textual Modeling Tools: Overview and Penalty Shoot-out
Bernhard Merkle discusses the various types of DSLs, and compares different language workbenches by using them with the same custom DSL in order to outline the differences between them.
Bernhard Merkle discusses the various types of DSLs, and compares different language workbenches by using them with the same custom DSL in order to outline the differences between them.
Pre-built versions of Dart Editor, the Eclipse-based Dart IDE, are now available, making it easy to try Dart. Frog is a new Dart to Javascript compiler - written in Dart by the creator of the Jython and IronPython projects. Meanwhile the Dart team has been busy explaining the Dart language and proposing features to round out the type system, eg. nullable types and more.
Google has announced a new language: Google Dart and tools. The language and tools are currently considered a technology preview, and an open source release is available now. The language is not yet in Chrome. Dart is dynamic, optional types and reified Generics. Concurrency uses Erlang-style processes called Isolates, share nothing with async message passing.
The first RC for JRuby 1.6 is out and brings improved Ruby 1.9.2 compatibility, experimental C extensions support, improved Windows support, Ruby Gems Maven support, performance and profiling improvements and more. InfoQ talked to JRuby's Charles Nutter about JRuby 1.6, the impact of Java 7 on JRuby, new language features in Ruby and much more.

Mirah is a new language for the JVM that can do everything the Java language can do - but with a Ruby-ish syntax and powerful metaprogramming. InfoQ talks to Mirah's creator Charles Nutter.

In a reprise of her ACM Turing Award lecture, Barbara Liskov discusses the invention of abstract data types, the CLU programming language, clusters, polymorphism, exception handling, iterators, implementation inheritance, type hierarchies, the Liskov Substitution Principle, polymorphism, and future challenges such as new abstractions, parallelism, and the Internet.

In this talk Glenn Vanderburg discusses what the Ruby community has learned about building DSLs, and shows how to build state-of-the-art DSLs without going overboard.
In this interview from the Erlang Factory event in London, three creators of modern functional languages -- Martin Odersky, creator of Scala; Joe Armstrong, a creator of Erlang; and Don Syme, creator of F# -- discuss the similarities and differences of their creations. They also discuss their languages’ common thread -- that they integrate object-oriented features in functional languages.
Mariano Guerra talks about Efene, a new language that targets the Erlang VM, which attempts to provide nicer syntax than Erlang.