Improving Snakeskin development experience using LSP | Abdelrahman Abounegm

Talk by: Abdelrahman Abounegm Recorded at Edadeal Tech Meetup 2024, Moscow #LSP #Snakeskin #Edadeal #Yandex #TypeScript #DX #Langium Improving the development experience of a domain-specific language is critical to its usability and adoption. This talk explores how the Language Server Protocol (LSP) was utilized to enhance the development experience for Snakeskin, a templating language with a long history. Starting with a fresh codebase specifically for language tooling, the presentation details how features like syntax highlighting, diagnostic messages, hover information, and code navigation were implemented to meet user expectations. It also examines the challenges faced during this process, such as designing language tools for a language with flexible syntax, and the approaches taken to overcome these challenges. To achieve this, Langium—a framework for language engineering in TypeScript—was employed, providing powerful abstractions for building a parser, code generator, and LSP integration. This talk highlights how Langium streamlined the development of Snakeskin’s language tools and made modern development features possible.