1. A method comprising: providing a development environment for a dataflow programming language allowing specifying of at least one matcher state machine that can perform pattern matching in a received input stream and generate output data, wherein the development environment comprises a plurality of tools to perform at least one of the following: identifying a plurality of potential data streams; identifying a set of reactive functions and parameters corresponding to patterns of data in the streams; identifying a set of handling functions and parameters for transforming data matching declared patterns; identifying a set of timed events against which patterns of data flow are compared; creating a dataflow program from expressed intent which describes the identified streams, reactions, functions, and timed events; providing the dataflow program as input to a two-phase translation tool comprising a first-phase translation tool incorporating a matcher generator for translating program statements to corresponding matchers, data flow topologies, functions, and related symbolic components, and a second-phase translation tool for generating optimized platform-specific hardware instructions corresponding to the translated statements for execution on a hardware platform; and receiving the output of each phase of the translation tool.