JetBrains now have an own mag named onBoard. One of the first articles is about Language Oriented Programming (short: LOP) and about MPS (Meta Programming System), which is or will be a development environment for LOP integrated into IDEA.

The ideas behind LOP sound strange and fantastic at the same time: You develop some languages to be able to develop another application. This reminds of Donald E. Knuth who invented TeX in order to be able to write his “The Art of Computer Programming”. And indeed Knuth is referenced in the onBoard-article.

To be sincere I don’t know what to think about it. It’s interesting and even intriguing but at the same time I cannot imagine what will be possible with this MPS thing and it is not really obvious to me that it will help at getting a job done. Well, I’ll have to wait till I get this thing into my hands to see how it feels and to make any learned comments about the whole matter.