• spazzman6156@sh.itjust.works
    27·
    1 day ago

    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

    • luciferofastora@feddit.org
      11·
      11 hours ago

      In this case, it probably is “Domain Specific Language”. If you’re unfamiliar, that means it’s created for a very specific context, unlike other, more general languages. That means you can keep the set of features small and save a lot of time making complex stuff work that isn’t relevant to that context.

      Loops are complex stuff. If you don’t really need them, you’re better off just keeping your language linear.

      On the other hand, they’re neat. Can’t be that bad, can it?

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 hours ago

      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.

    • kevincox@lemmy.ml
      7·
      18 hours ago

      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.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
    69·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • HeHoXa@lemmy.zip
      5·
      15 hours ago

      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.

        • HeHoXa@lemmy.zip
          3·
          8 hours ago

          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

            • HeHoXa@lemmy.zip
              1·
              7 hours ago

              Only sort of related but this reminded me of something that struck me recently:

              A great benefit of being dumb is never knowing something was too obvious to be worth logic

              Often in comedies, there will be a scene where the dummy helps the genius reach some epiphany just by applying simple reasoning to a point the genius glossed over

              I think this is pretty realistic

      • zaubentrucker@sopuli.xyz
        11·
        1 day ago

        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

  • Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    16·
    1 day ago

    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.

    • owsei@programming.dev
      2·
      11 hours ago

      Exactly! Making a DSL and using it like a programming language introduces necessities that will not be considered as throughly if they where added to a “real” language.

      I once wanted a DSL for a calendar program I was making (so the user could define complex events and stuff). So I made a simple programming language that could be embedded in the program, kinda like how lua is commonly used.