Java decaffeinated: experiences building a programming language from components

Most modern programming languages are complex and feature rich. Whilst this is (sometimes) an advantage for industrial-strength applications, it complicates both language teaching and language research. We describe our experiences in the design of a reduced sub-set of the Java language and its implementation using the Vanilla language development framework. We argue that Vanilla’s component-based approach allows the language’s feature set to be varied quickly and simply compared with other development approaches.