A Language by Any Other Name

Some programs are configurable, and they expose a so called “configuration” language. These tend to range from key value pairs to full-fledged, Turing-complete, programming languages.

A “programming” language is also a “configuration” language, but only in the abstract. A programming language (somehow, by compiler, or virtual machine, or direct execution of an AST) produces, let’s call it an image¹, in memory which evolves the CPU and memory over time while executing.

But, then there’s an interesting realization. A “configuration” language doesn’t configure the CPU and its attached memory in the typical sense. It configures the image. Essentially, a “configuration” language writes specialized programs on the fly, just like a JIT, or a macro-processor in Lisp.

- 2014/02/10