Application Driven Software Methodology for Automatic Compiler Generation

Software tools were created in order to ease the compiler generation task. But the demand for new programming languages and thus for new compilers grows with the domain of computer applications. The new approaches for language design and compiler implementation, such as those spawned by the domain specific languages, rely on programming and are not easily followed by problem experts. On the other hand compiler design and implementation is a topic frequently eliminated from the curriculum. The consequence is that while the demand for programming language design and compiler implementation increases, expertise in the conventional methods for solving this problem decreases. Since one cannot expect the compiler to disappear from software systems of future computers we need new approaches for language design and compiler implementation that would not rely on conventional knowledge that sits at the basis of current technology. We are developing a new computer-based problem solving methodology where application domain (AD) experts develop problem solving algorithms using the natural language of their problem domains and information technology (IT) experts develop software tools that can execute the algorithms developed by AD experts without translating them into programs. This paper illustrates this new computer-based problem solving methodology using the domain of programming language design and compiler implementation. We show how a programming language expert can generate a parser without programming. A similar approach can be developed for all other compiler components as well as for their integration into a compiler.