The OOPSLE workshop is a discussion-oriented and collaborative forum for formulating and addressing with open, unsolved and unsolvable problems in software language engineering. It can help you define your problems or verify them on the early stage with the community.

“Software languages” comprise all kinds of artificial languages used in software development: for programming, markup, pretty-printing, modelling, data description, formal specification, evolution, etc. Software language engineering is a relatively new research domain of systematic, disciplined and measurable approaches of development, evolution and maintenance of such languages.

The OOPSLE workshop has successfully ran in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2020. We resume the series in the post-pandemic world, promising to keep the spirit of the original editions with the emphasis on discussions and a versatile cast of participants.

Programme

• 11:00 – 12:00 Bernhard Rumpe, keynote (slides)
  • Adressing the “Engineering” in “Software Language Engineering”

  Up to now, the development of new software languages has remained largely an artisanal process, reminiscent of the state of software engineering half a century ago.
  To bring a more systematic, engineering-oriented methodology to the definition of software languages, we address several critical challenges. These include the lack of formal semantics, the absence of reusable language libraries, and the difficulties enabling compositionality, extensibility, and variant management in both languages and their associated tools. We also review the current state of the art and explore potential solutions to these issues.

• 13:30 – 14:30 Jordi Cabot, keynote (slides)
  • Who will create the languages of the future? (hint: probably not a team of language engineers!)

  Software is eating the world. Which means that we need good languages to write all this software. And, often, come up with “new” languages to be able to efficiently target new software domains and technologies. In this talk, we will explore the changing landscape of language engineering and discuss how Artificial Intelligence and low-code/no-code techniques can play a role in this future by helping in the definition, use, execution, and testing of new languages. Even empowering non-tech users to create their own language infrastructure. Maybe without them even realizing.

• 15:30 – 16:30 Antonio Cicchetti, keynote (slides)
  • Let’s Make Abstraction Engineering Fun Again

  Model-Driven Engineering has witnessed a technological revolution with the advent of rich web interfaces. A part of the consequences is visible in the widespread adoption of Low-/No-code development platforms. From a software language engineering perspective, nowadays many language workbenches are web-based (or provide a web-based alternative). In this talk I will discuss recent experiences with the development and adoption of a “native” web-based language workbench called JJODEL. In particular, the advanced web interfaces disclose the support for interesting MDE-relevant features, notably flexible concrete syntaxes, language co-evolution, and collaborative development.

Workshop Co-Chairs

• Mikhail Barash, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
• Vadim Zaytsev, Universiteit Twente, The Netherlands