Instead, they created Context, a lightweight language that was compiled to run on The New York Times’s servers and optimized for speed. Rather than asking editors to learn a programming language, the developers tied the language into the macros the editors used to send formatting instructions to the printing press. Engineers bristled at having to learn a programming language only used at The Times. Recruiting new engineers was sometimes a challenge because candidates had to accept that they were joining an organization with a homegrown programming language and build system. They used Context to create a fast ad server called AdX, which used regular expressions to match ad slots according to targeting parameters for each ad campaign.

Source: New York Times February 20, 2019 20:37 UTC