On 26-Apr-10, at 3:46 PM, Dhananjay Nene wrote:
[snip]
I think a DSL based contract (or more precisely waterfall
specification) may
be more concise and self descriptive. But that would require a
definition of
a new language grammar. However reasoning about the contracts is
not in the
scope of the SEC specification. The scope is (in my understanding) a
clear
communication of the how the waterfall implications are worked out
(eg. how
much does each stakeholder get paid and what are the conditions
under which
that gets decided) and at least in terms of standard programming
languages
Python does pretty well.
Well the question I'm asking is, what are the implicit qualifications
of the humans who are going to interpret these specifications? I see
two profiles:
1) Financial, actuarial and legal experts with some programming
experience.
2) Programming experts with financial, actuarial and legal experience.
While there are people who fit both these profiles, there is a reason
they get paid high-six figure USD salaries. Python alone is fine, but
consider bog-standard recurring financial patterns like compound
interest and graduated tax brackets. These imply functions that will
occur often in these specifications, further implying (de-
facto-)standard libraries containing highly domain-specific financial
routines will be written. These are already embedded proto-DSLs! So
you're not side-stepping DSLs by using python, only hiding them in
plain sight. But you are not necessarily gaining the benefits of using
an independent, well-specified declarative grammar the primary one
being that you are possibly burdening non-programmers with general
purpose programming constructs that are not their primary focus. There
is a reason so many finance guys use R and (gah!) Excel to do their
financial modelling - they are not interested in programming.
Anyhow I'll stop here, I understand that the SEC requires only a
subset of what I'm talking about, but the scope for these kinds of
agreements goes well past the SEC and is something worth studying and
implementing in its own right for fun and profit.
-Taj.
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