Domain Specific Languages & Turing Completeness

I don’t know if it’s been said before1, so in case it hasn’t, I’ll say it:

Every domain specific language converges towards Turing completeness over it’s lifetime.

The reason for this observation is that I’ve recently come in contact with a number of new DSLs2, which exhibit the same problem I’ve seen with other DLSs in the past. Except, this time, I noticed that their authors expressly distanced themselves from the idea of implementing Turing complete languages.

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  1. A quick search hasn’t found anything. []
  2. New to me, that is. []

Best Tool for the Job

I thought I’d start the new year not with a boring (or not so boring) retrospective. I’d also like to avoid a post conveying my best wishes, but of course, I do wish you all a happy new year.

Instead I’d like to write a short post about an old adage and it’s (mis-)use in computing:

Use the best tool for the job.

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ContentProvider Wasted Potential

This article is part 11 of 11 in the series Android Development

This is only a short post in the series, and the aim is to let off some steam on the wasted potential in ContentProvider. I love ContentProviders. They’re the same sort of thing as a virtual filesystem layer (VFS): an interface, that lets people come up with ingenious ways of using it.

When it comes to VFS, Linux has FUSE, an additional abstraction layer that lets people write filesystem code — that is, deep system code — as simply as writing applications. The ease of use allows for plenty of innovation in this sector.

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Phone Screen Size & Usability

In my previous post I observed that the screen size of the new Galaxy Nexus phone is such that usability suffers. To back up and illustrate that statement, I’ve decided to shoot short demo videos.

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Galaxy Nexus / Ice Cream Sandwich First Impressions

For my job, I ordered the new Google Galaxy Nexus phone a few days ago, and yesterday it finally arrived. After having used the Nexus One as my main phone for years, I knew there’d be a big difference in the phones. But of course, the Galaxy Nexus is also the first phone to ship with the new Ice Cream Sandwich Android version.

In a way, I don’t care much whether I’m going to review hardware or software differences here, as from a user’s perspective, it’s the overall usability that matters. So without further ado, on to my first impressions.

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