[brundolf]

My impression (strengthened by your argument) is that nearly anything we can say about a DSL we can say about data in general (as opposed to code). A DSL at the end of the day is just a specialized, idealized schema for data representation. Most of its advantages would also apply (in varying degrees) to storing business information as JSON, or in SQL tables, or as s-expressions for that matter. In any of these cases we get the same benefits of portability, introspectability, automation, etc.

That's not to say that DSLs are useless. In many cases they have advantages against the above formats in terms of both what they can, and (just as important) can't, express. I just think they're part of a bigger conversation.