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0 pointsfyrn_2y ago0 comments

The random "ever done a CS degree?" is weird, and the premise that regular expressions are fundamental and mathematically general and therefore not a DSL is flawed: ebnf is also like that, and even more general. It _can_ parse HTML. Doesn't stop it from being an arbitrary representation of abstract syntax patterns. It's a DSL through and though and so is Regex. Actually pretty hard to find that pure of a DSL, which such a defined domain, as many DSLs evolve to be more general language like over time as the article says.

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dunk0102y ago

Well, I remember them teaching that stuff, and regex is quite clearly a very different sort of DSL than the ones being discussed. That combined with the comment author's seeming lack of nuance made me wonder if they'd ever looked deeper than "all things without a for loop are a DSL". I think we are getting too far into the semantics here though, at risk of splitting hairs and geting lost in the details. The core point is that the article is talking about some quite specific types of DSLs, so you can't say respond with "No, DSLs are useful" and then list off a bunch of unrelated stuff as a rebuttal.

eduction2y ago

I was replying to a very unuanced article, with the headline “DSLs are a waste of time” and no further hedging on that headline in the text. So ya, I knocked down the argument on the argument’s own (very broad) terms.

No need for the personal swipe.

> The core point is that the article is talking about some quite specific types of DSLs

It used specific types of DSLs as evidence but I don’t see a narrowing of the claim itself? Where are you getting that?

dunk0102y ago

> No need for the personal swipe

Fair enough

It used specific types of DSLs as evidence but I don’t see a narrowing of the claim itself? Where are you getting that?

What makes me sad, as I posted in a top-level comment, is that I read this exact same rationale 20 years go, by Steve Yegge, and yet we are still having the same stupid debate in programming about whether we should use DSLs and then the DSL grows and grows and, lo and behold, it's Turing-complete, but its ergonomics are dire and its tooling non-existant. And it's not like this is some niche part of the ecosystem - it's how most people deploy infrastructure.

What I despise is seeing the same problems come up again and again, and never seeing good solutions to them, jsut the same mistakes, repeated. Programming is, truly, terrible. Just a load of slaves building the Pyramids.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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dunk0102y ago

eduction2y ago

No need for the personal swipe.

> The core point is that the article is talking about some quite specific types of DSLs

It used specific types of DSLs as evidence but I don’t see a narrowing of the claim itself? Where are you getting that?

dunk0102y ago

> No need for the personal swipe

Fair enough

It used specific types of DSLs as evidence but I don’t see a narrowing of the claim itself? Where are you getting that?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse