4 ms·
XSLT was one in a litany of domain specific languages (ant, apache rewrite rules, latex macros, etc.) that evolved towards turing completeness because that's wh
by pytester 8y ago
XSLT was one in a litany of domain specific languages (ant, apache rewrite rules, latex macros, etc.) that evolved towards turing completeness because that's what the problem space demanded.
In most if not all of these cases an existing and well designed turing complete programming language would likely have better served them.
- astine 8y agoI don't see a reason that a DSL can't be Turing complete and still a better option than an existing language. If you look at old-school make files, they are little more than shell script with top level rules that you can invoke from the command line. You could theoretically just use shell script but the make scripts still simplify the task quite a bit.
- thanatropism 8y agoThere was a post on HN a few weeks back to the effect that it's rather easy for Turing completeness to emerge accidentally. I wish I remembered more specifics so I could find it again.
- chriswarbo 8y agoWas it http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complete.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complet... by any chance?
- hyperpallium 8y agoLess power means less to go wrong. Automatic checks can also be deeper in a simpler system. Your point is valid though, the power seems to end up being needed, sometimes, in some parts, in some cases. Escaping to a full language when needed seems to retain the benefits of both worlds.
- miohtama 8y agoI wrote a lot of XMLT in early 2000. The idea behind pure function is nice, but in practice you ended up with hundreds of mini plugins in Java or Python.