Abstract
If we want domain-specific program generation to form the basis of a strong, long-lived research community, we need to recognize what its potential impact might be and why the promise has not been fulfilled so far. In this chapter, I review my past work on generators and I present a collection of personal opinions on the symptoms convincing me that there is room for improvement in the generators research community. Then I analyze the causes of these symptoms, some of which are inherent, while some others can be overcome. A major cause of difficulty is the inherent domain-specificity of generators that often makes research work be less valuable to other generator writers who are unfamiliar with the domain. I propose directions on what should be considered promising research for the community, what I believe are useful principles for generator design, and what community building measures we can take.
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Smaragdakis, Y. (2004). A Personal Outlook on Generator Research. In: Lengauer, C., Batory, D., Consel, C., Odersky, M. (eds) Domain-Specific Program Generation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3016. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25935-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25935-0_6
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