Software Language Engineering

We are pleased to present the proceedings of the First International Conf- ence on Software LanguageEngineering (SLE 2008). The conference was held in th Toulouse,FranceduringSeptember29-30,2008andwasco-locatedwiththe11 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS 2008). The SLE conference series is devoted to a wide range of topics related to arti?cial languages in software engineering. SLE is an international research forum that brings together researchers and practitioners from both industry and academia to expand the frontiers of software language engineering. Historically, SLE emerged from two established workshop series: LDTA, Language Descriptions, Tools, and Applications, which has been a sat- lite event at ETAPS for the last 9 years, and ATEM which has been co-located with MODELS and WCRE for 5 years. SLE'sforemostmissionis to encourageand organizecommunicationbetween communities that have traditionally looked at software languagesfrom di?erent, more specialized, and yet complementary perspectives. SLE emphasizes the f- damental notion of languages as opposed to any realization in speci?c technical spaces. In this context, the term "software language" comprises all sorts of - ti?cial languages used in software development including general-purpose p- gramming languages, domain-speci?c languages, modeling and meta-modeling languages, data models, and ontologies. Software language engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quanti?able approach to the devel- ment,use,andmaintenanceoftheselanguages. TheSLEconferenceisconcerned with all phases of the lifecycle of software languages; these include the design, implementation, documentation, testing, deployment, evolution, recovery, and retirement of languages.