Post #2424938

2026-02-18 14:09 UTC

@jarkman@chaos.social @jonathanhogg@mastodon.social I get the broader point here, but at the same time, as computers have moved to encompass more and more of the human sphere, is it actually reasonable to exect any languge to be actually general purpose? Perhaps for some uses cases it's the right choice, but when I look at data-science code written by vernacular developers (experts whose expertise is in a domain other than computer science) I feel the freedom from those languages just gives more scope for error/mistake/poor style that will bite them later). Why can't we embrace more DSLs?

Replies (2)

@jonathanhogg@mastodon.social 2026-02-18 14:11

@michael@toot.mynameismwd.org @jarkman@chaos.social Fuck yes! I want a thousand languages to bloom. It seems like once everyone used to write their own language and we fell out of the habit. The Dragon Book used to be required reading for CS…

Open ##2424939
@tobyjaffey@mastodon.me.uk 2026-02-18 14:18

@michael@toot.mynameismwd.org @jarkman@chaos.social @jonathanhogg@mastodon.social (IMO) we can't have more DSLs because everything useful is now plumbed together from a series of heterogenous parts and we've somehow decided they can only interoperate at the (barbaric) C ABI level, or the (absurdly inefficient) web level. So, we rely on general purpose languages using specialised libraries, instead of the other way around. I think fixing this boundary/contract problem would fix a lot in s/w engineering.

Open ##2424942