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Presentation - DSLs in Kotlin by Niranjan Ratnakar

Presentation - DSLs in Kotlin by Niranjan Ratnakar

Presentation slides for SD Kotlin's July 2018 meeting

SD Kotlin

July 11, 2018
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Transcript

  1. Outline • What are DSLs? • Why should we use

    DSLs? • Kotlin features to enable DSLs • Walk through of type safe HTML builder
  2. What are DSLs? • [Wikipedia definition] • A domain-specific language

    (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. • This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains.
  3. What are DSLs? • A DSL is like an electric

    drill: it is a powerful tool with a wide variety of uses, but a specific context, namely, putting holes in things. • A GPL is a complete workbench, with a variety of tools intended for performing a variety of tasks.
  4. Another example of DSLs • Recently, companies are working on

    AI processors • AI can be done by CPUs and GPUs • Why do we need custom AI processors? – Power efficiency – Speed
  5. Examples • Regular expressions • SQL • Android layouts (?)

    – Implemented traditionally in XML – Inflated by Android framework at runtime
  6. Why use DSLs? • Code looks closer to domain description.

    It is at a higher level of abstraction. • Lesser cognitive load for domain experts to write and maintain code. • The compiler (if applicable) can provide assistance while writing code. – We will see this in the type safe builder example
  7. Why use DSL? (Advanced) • We wont go into much

    details on this topic. • Interpreter design pattern – Write a program description using a restricted set of primitives – Interpret the program separately • Multiple interpretations for a single program • Example, evaluate an expression tree or print it
  8. Kotlin support for DSLs • Write DSLs with Kotlin as

    the host language • Programs look closer to the domain • Can use language constructs – for, if, ... • Example, Anko for android layouts – Better looking layout – Easier data binding
  9. Kotlin features to enable DSLs • Extension functions – http://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/extensions.html

    • Lambda with receivers – http://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/lambdas.html • Passing a lambda to the last parameter – https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/lambdas.html
  10. Walkthrough • Specify the HTML document as a DSL –

    (Work with a subset of HTML tags) – Can have tags that depend on command line arguments • Covert the HTML document to a string • Use StringBuilder for efficiency • Lets go to code!