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by hinkley 1302 days ago
> People have been making this argument since the 80s and possibly even earlier. My experience is often the opposite. Little languages are usually far, far harder than (mis-)using "big" languages for small tasks.

From the top level comment.

It’s also the primary failure mode for DSLs. There’s never any thought for tracing and debugging, and so it becomes a peaen to the primary author(‘s ego).

Once you no longer have impostor syndrome it gets much harder to play along with these ego trips. It’s not that I’m too dumb to understand your DSL, it’s that you’re a fool who thinks writing your own language is the pinnacle of success. It’s very rare for it to better than a decent API and you’re thinking about yourself, not your coworkers.

That’s why everyone always mentions SQL. It’s the exception to the rule, not an example of when DSLs can be good. Remember XSLT. Remember a dozen other failed DSLs. Per decade. Forever and ever.
1 comments
williamcotton 1302 days ago
So every new language is written be a fool on an ego trip? Or are you calling me the fool?

I'm having a very hard time separating what seems to be a painful personal experience from a productive conversation about the future of programming languages.

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hinkley 1302 days ago 

    - Hard to onboard new hires
    - Code breaks because of lack of understanding of dependencies
    - Code changes become harder to manage
Anyone who finds these problems improved by a DSL isn’t spending time looking at what is actually making life hard for their coworkers, and therefore arrogance.

What helps me with those problems is tool selection. Picking community supported tools that fight some of these problems by allowing me to hire people who already know part of our system, and who can use a wider community as a knowledge base instead of just internal folks who have run off to work on other interesting things and don’t have the time anymore for something cool they did three years ago.

A veterinarian explained part of the dynamic to me quite some time ago: it’s better for your emotional relationship with your pet if a stranger does an uncomfortable procedure rather than you. If we use a tool with poor support at least we can bond over it as a team. If it’s Steve’s baby and he’s terrible at support that animosity turns inward, which is not just a problem, it’s the beginning of the end.

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