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It's a trade. For example, you can split the whole program (think execution of hundreds of business rules) into an interpreter - maintained by developers - and the pure rules in an easy to understand text file - maintained by business people.



Has that happened, pretty much ever? It is a great aspirational goal. I've never seen it pan out, though.

Not that there isn't a benefit from reducing things to the language you use to reason about the overall problem, and the language used to implement it. In large, whether you create a "DSL" or not, you almost always move to doing things in terms of the API you are using. Effectively making it a language. Taking a little more deliberate control does seem nice.

That said, I have found benefit in keeping fewer abstractions around. This is especially true as I am supporting an API. Don't hide that API from anything you do. Too easy to hide warts in it that you might otherwise fix.


Has that happened, pretty much ever? It is a great aspirational goal. I've never seen it pan out, though.

That's pretty much the definition of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect

Almost every story about a "business rules engine" I've heard was that it eventually turned into an odd Turing-complete programming language, and it'd be simpler to just write the same code in the original language.


Well, it depends, if you can keep the rules structured as data and not as code you're fine.




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