Stop Torturing Your Colleagues with DSLs
In the programming world, whenever a new technology or concept emerges, there’s always someone eager to experiment with it. They believe it’s a sign of their passion for learning and technical depth. Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) are one such concept that has been repeatedly misunderstood and misused. Let me be blunt: in most cases, creating a new DSL is nothing short of torturing your colleagues and wasting your company’s resources.
DSLs often feel like magical tools that can solve all problems, making you feel like a god with the power to create worlds. In reality, they are more akin to isolated islands adorned with shiny decorations but riddled with traps, venomous snakes, and wild beasts. Only a select few “natives” — the developers who participated in their creation — can navigate these islands with ease.
When you decide to invent a DSL, what you’re essentially doing is forcing your team to learn a brand-new language designed to solve a very narrow set of problems. This is akin to telling your colleagues: “Hey, I’ve invented a new language to solve problem X. Now you all have to learn it, or you’ll be too outdated.” This approach is, frankly, selfish.
