Comments on: String Manipulation DSL’s http://joshrobb.com/blog/2007/09/05/string-manipulation-dsls/ tagline's are so web2.0 Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:44:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Mats Helander http://joshrobb.com/blog/2007/09/05/string-manipulation-dsls/comment-page-1/#comment-34 Mats Helander Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:07:49 +0000 http://joshrobb.com/blog/2007/09/05/string-manipulation-dsls/#comment-34 DSLs are cool, no question about that, but when did "let's invent a new language" become the default approach to any problem? To me, looking through someone's code and discovering a DOM representing their structure and a visitor using a StringBuilder for turning into a string (the problem is not with using a StringBuilder - it lies with mixing StringBuilder code with code that may use logic to build up the structure) makes me much happier than if I discover there is a new language devised for this. In your example, the logic seems to become intertwined with the string DSL code, which imo is roughly as bad as mixing that logic in with StringBuilder code. /Mats DSLs are cool, no question about that, but when did “let’s invent a new language” become the default approach to any problem?

To me, looking through someone’s code and discovering a DOM representing their structure and a visitor using a StringBuilder for turning into a string (the problem is not with using a StringBuilder – it lies with mixing StringBuilder code with code that may use logic to build up the structure) makes me much happier than if I discover there is a new language devised for this. In your example, the logic seems to become intertwined with the string DSL code, which imo is roughly as bad as mixing that logic in with StringBuilder code.

/Mats

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