Language-based software engineering

•A language-centric view of software engineering is presented.•A software system is a processor of its input language.•Success of DSLs depends on rapidly building their implementation infrastructure.•Implementation infrastructure can be developed rapidly via logic programming.

We present a language-centric view of the software development process. We argue that success of the domain-specific language (DSL) methodology depends on being able to rapidly craft a DSL's implementation infrastructure. We present logic programming as a rapid way of developing this implementation infrastructure. We also present a language-centric view of a software system as a processor of its input language.