[crdoconnor]

It can work but it works best when the language is kept dumb.

A dumb declarative language is easier to understand and easier to maintain. It can be used to help maintain a strict separation of concerns.

The smarter you try to make the language, the worse it becomes. Ant & MSBuild AFAIK are basically full programming languages in their own right so there was really no point to them actually being their own language.