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0 pointsklyrs2y ago0 comments

> DSLs are, universally, awful, as they grow and grow until they encompass all features of a general programming language

This is the Slippery Slope Fallacy writ plain.

A great many DSLs are stable over years or decades. By your reasoning, a stable DSL is bad because it's going to grow. Why is it going to grow? crickets

Peeling away the fallacy, we could perhaps agree that "the uncontrolled growth of a DSL is an evil best avoided." Or if I'm being less generous, we could look at the bottom of that slippery slope and conclude "general programming languages are bad," because that's what the author seems most incensed by.

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eternityforest2y ago

General programming languages were meant from the start to be something like what they are today. They're intended to manage complexity, not pretend nobody will ever want to do complex things.

They are also not application specific. Language design is hard. DSLs are made up by people who's main project isn't the language.

Sometimes the motive for a DSL is something like "I don't like how this takes 5 lines of code in JS, if I made my own language it would only take 3"

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