Telescoping Languages: A Compiler Strategy for Implementation of High-Level Domain-Specific Programming Systems

As both machines and programs have become more complex, the programming process has become correspondingly more labor-intensive. This has created a software gap between the need for new software and the aggregate capacity of the current workforce to produce it. This problem has been compounded by the slow growth of programming productivity over the past two decades. One way to bridge this gap is to make it possible for end users to develop programs in high-level domain-specific programming systems. The principal impediment to the success of these systems in the past has been the poor performance of the resulting applications. To address this problem, we are developing a new compiler technology that supports script-based telescoping languages, which can be built from base languages and domain-specific libraries. By exhaustively compiling the libraries in advance, we can ensure that the performance and portability of the applications produced by such systems are high, while the compile times for scripts are acceptable to the end user. These qualities are essential if script-based systems are to be practical for development of production applications.