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0 pointshot_gril2y ago0 comments

Yeah, nowadays a DSL is almost never a good idea. A library for some pre-existing flexible language can do the job without reinventing a whole lot of wheels. The most specific languages I can think of that make sense are SQL and Solidity.

But DSLs are tempting, especially among the more passionate programmers, so at work we've ended up with a lot of them. All of them are tripping hazards.

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friendzis2y ago

DSLs are awesome for what they are. DSLs let you ingest/load untrusted user code directly and have strong isolation barrier, allowing for very powerful user customizations with "native" implementations of certain features /functions.

Anything from programmable authorization to custom views becomes safely and relatively easily available. Say what you want about ESB pattern, but you can implement ESB transformers in a custom DSL.

Obviously not every piece of software needs these features, but when it does DSLs are very handy.

hot_grilOP2y ago

React and RN let users define views with JSX that are natively implemented. Not sure if that counts as a DSL, but it's JS extended to allow embedded HTML with custom tags, so it's not really a new thing to learn. Part of what made React popular was how vanilla it felt compared to other things that defined whole new languages or heavy-handed frameworks. And now that it exists, it doesn't need to be reinvented.

At work, we had two painful DSLs for monitoring queries. Our team changed monitoring systems entirely just to use SQL instead.

wolletd2y ago

I'm wondering, is Bash/Shell a DSL?

You can do anything with it because it allows launching other programs, but I'd say it was designed specifically for the domain of launching other programs and building data pipelines with their in- and outputs.

friendzis2y ago

While DSLs are primarily designed to easily express certain idioms (e.g. Logo-family primarily describes pencil movement), generally (!), DSL is embeddable, isolated, Turing incomplete language. Although some DSLs are Turing complete, they are first and foremost designed to express domain specific idioms.

IMO Bash and friends are too powerful and generic to be considered DSLs.

59nadir2y ago

As far as languages go SQL is pretty bad, though. It's not even really a good representation of what it's trying to do. I think if SQL is a good domain specific language the bar seems very low.

hot_grilOP2y ago

Nothing has done SQL's job better than SQL (or its Postgres/Oracle/MySQL variants) so far. The closest would be the map-reduce idiom.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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friendzis2y ago

Anything from programmable authorization to custom views becomes safely and relatively easily available. Say what you want about ESB pattern, but you can implement ESB transformers in a custom DSL.

Obviously not every piece of software needs these features, but when it does DSLs are very handy.

hot_grilOP2y ago

At work, we had two painful DSLs for monitoring queries. Our team changed monitoring systems entirely just to use SQL instead.

wolletd2y ago

I'm wondering, is Bash/Shell a DSL?

friendzis2y ago

IMO Bash and friends are too powerful and generic to be considered DSLs.

59nadir2y ago

As far as languages go SQL is pretty bad, though. It's not even really a good representation of what it's trying to do. I think if SQL is a good domain specific language the bar seems very low.

hot_grilOP2y ago

Nothing has done SQL's job better than SQL (or its Postgres/Oracle/MySQL variants) so far. The closest would be the map-reduce idiom.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse