c2005 Most new ideas in software developments are really new variations on old ideas. This article describes one of these, the growing idea of a class of tools that I call Language Workbenches - examples of which include Intentional Software, JetBrains's Meta Programming System, and Microsoft's Software Factories. These tools take an old style of development - which I call language oriented programming and use IDE tooling in a bid to make language oriented programming a viable approach. Although I'm not enough of a prognosticator to say whether they will succeed in their ambition, I do think that these tools are some of the most interesting things on the horizon of software development. Interesting enough to write this essay to try to explain, at least in outline, how they work and the main issues around their future usefulness.
In our professional software development, we have focused on finding ways to help developers work more effectively. Despite the range of programming languages available today, we are still limited by them. It makes sense to extend the existing languages to create more domain-oriented ones, which allow writing programs on a higher level and in a manner that is more natural to each domain. With an instrument that allows creating language constructs as simple as creating classes or methods is in a conventional language, you can significantly change the way you develop software. This new style of programming, when you create specialized languages, use them to develop software, and extend them when and how required, is called Language Oriented Programming (LOP). MPS Story Meta Programming System started in 2003 as a research project. In 2004, its underlying concepts were described in the Language Oriented Programming article.