Chapter 1. Why Software Language Engineering?

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

—Victor Hugo French dramatist, novelist, and poet (1802–1885)

This chapter explains why languages are becoming more and more important in computer science and why language engineering, the art of creating languages, is an important topic for computer scientists. This chapter also gives some background knowledge on several theories regarding languages and language engineering.

1.1 An Increasing Number of Languages

In the past few years, an increasing number of languages used for designing and creating software have been created. Along with that has come an increasing interest in language engineering: in ...

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