Language of Languages: Project Retrospective & Archived Resources

Part 6 in the Language of Languages series.

The Language of Languages (LoLs) research project explored fundamental questions about how software engineering tools can support multi-notation systems, domain-specific languages, and virtual integration.

By centering the design on Concepts rather than syntax, LoLs demonstrated that developers, systems analysts, and engineers can collaborate on a single system model while working in their own preferred textual or graphical notations.

Summary of key milestones and links

• 2008: Why we built Language of Languages, the multi-notation problem.
• 2010: The first prototype in Squeak Smalltalk and OMeta.
• 2011: Demonstration at SPLASH 2011, with the paper and the presentation deck.
• 2017: The web workbench in JavaScript and OMetaJS; Open the Workbench.
• 2020: The JNode environment and LoLsServer.

Source code

• LanguageWorkbench, LoLsOMetaJS, LoLsWorkbench, and LoLsServer.
• The original project website is preserved in the LanguageOfLanguages repository.

All documentation, papers, slides, and source code remain archived and available open source under the MIT license for researchers and tool creators interested in language workbenches and concept unification.