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DSL's are great as long as you don't take them too far towards the "natural language" style of coding.

For example, I find RSpec's story runner uncomfortable to work with because of the overly English-like syntax it uses.

This blog post has some "before and after" code showing the same tests/specs implemented at unit tests, and as Rspec stories:

http://evang.eli.st/blog/2007/9/1/user-stories-with-rspec-s-...

To me the heavily DSL-oriented story code is easier to read as far as intent, but as a programmer trying to figure out what the code is actually doing, it's sort of a big WTF.

Dave Thomas has an interesting writeup on "DSL's going too far" at:

http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2008/03/the-lang...



Another example: Applescript


Bingo.


I agree that using a DSL isn't an automatic thing.

However, I think there would be an equal number of counter-examples - cases where a problem has been shoe-horned into an existing language to the point that it become illegible.

(In fact, you could argue this happens more often than not).




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