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It’s the configuration complexity clock.
You hardcode values in an established, full-featured programming language.
That gets annoying, so you push some into config files.
That’s not powerful enough, so you let the config files include conditionals.
Soon your config files are more like scripts, but it’s so easy to keep adding features…
And suddenly you’re back to hardcoding, but in a newer, jankier programming language.
That’s not powerful enough, so you let the config files include conditionals.
NOPE! Nope. That’s the too far point. Abort. Abandon ship. Start over.
Grug make thinky box do good.
Grug too dumb to understand impossible.
Peers say server too weak for search. Grug write custom search. Customer happy. Boss happy. Peers say it fail edge case. Grug shrug.
Peers say web app can’t use CLI tool. Grug make extension. Customers happy. Boss happy. Peers say that cheating. Grug too dumb for rules.
Grug code small. Get used lots. Peers code big. Argue about reviews. Never get deployed.
Grug strongest there is
i prefer referring to greenspun’s tenth
So this is exactly talking about Nix, Guix, chezmoi?
Don’t know about chezmoi, but Nix and Guix use a proper programming language that is also suited as a configuration file format, no?
So they’re at noon and might just stay there
guix yeah, since they picked a pre-existing one. nix the language is arguably an overgrown dsl which explaits why it’s… real weird.
I guess nix started at noon of the next day lol
That’s excellent. I think the initial momentum towards a DSL is basically equivalent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect
Ok I’m inferring here, but why does DSL mean more than one thing in the technology/computer field? The only one I know is Digital Subscriber Line
The one I’m familiar with is “Domain Specific Language”
I was thinking Damn Small Linux. Felt weird reading “small damn small Linux”
“small, damn small. Linux.”
Sounds like an ad lol
Dick sucking lips
Because every three letter acronym means more than one thing. There are only 17 576 TLA so they are going to be heavily duplicated.
You should almost always spell out acronyms on the first use.
I’m puzzled too. In DSL the “local loop” is the wiring between your house and the nearest central office or concentrator. Kind of like “last mile” but more like “last block or two”. So I don’t get what “adding loops” would mean.
Besides Domain Specific Language which somebody else refers to in the thread, DSL can also mean Damn Small Linux. Still no clue about adding loops.
Your DSL isn’t embedded on a Turing complete language. That was your mistake.
YAML has entered the chat.
Well, for all Turing complete languages around, you picked that one?
Using Blank Space or Malboge would be the wrong answer too.
It seemed to best fit the theme of the thread.
So… How about Conway’s life for DSL?
That…
Wasn’t on my enumeration of bad options :)
I wonder can you build a CI/CD framework what runs on life?
I have created a handful of DSLs over the years and I think most of them were bad ideas. Ironically the most complex one is the one that I think was actually right. It had support for a lot of stuff like loops, functions, custom variables and even some weird shit like async execution of child commands.
I think what made it work in that case was mostly that the purpose of the DSL was completely different from the others. The system wasn’t designed with a DSL in mind. The DSL was just a simpler way to provide input for something that was already there.
If your DSL has loops tyen it should be a Python library
Looking at you, Gradle
Gradle uses Groovy or Kotlin for its DSL, though…
So python compiled to JVM-bytecode.
One word: Terraform
You either put it in the DSL or people start writing generators for your DSL.
