Martin Fowler is often credited with coming up with the distinction between the two. The concept is similar to a "fluent interface" from a different point of view.
http://martinfowler.com/articles/languageWorkbench.html#Inte...
The sweetening of the syntax in Sinatra seems to be rather straightforward. I assume it's something like:
# internal route stuff
@routes = {}
def get(method, &block)
@routes[method] = block
end
# user provided code
get 'foo' do
puts 'foo'
end
# something hooked up to execute at the end of the file
while input = gets.chomp
@routes[input].call if @routes.include? input
end
Ok, so the answer is, "because Rubyists have redefined that phrase"? ;-)
And I also brought up the "fluent interface" thing to suggest that you could call it that if it made you happier. For my tastes, I'm fine with the idea that a "language" reuses a more general purpose language's interpreter and libraries. YMMV.
I assume it's something like:...
Sure looks similar, but as you can see from all the code above the method there's a lot more going on. But hey, at least they didn't need to write a parser. ;-)