Polyglot Programming: Building Solutions by Composing Languages

Back in 2006, the author coined the term polyglot programming in a blog post. It is not a new concept (being at least as old as Unix and probably much older-the author just attached a modern term to it). That blog post was a response to what some are calling a renaissance in computer languages. Polyglot programming refers to using special-purpose languages combined in the same context to create better problem solutions. To illustrate the concept, this paper reviews some recent history about the abstraction mechanisms that developers use to solve problems today, and points to a new way to do so in the future.