But your ORM example could be considered a DSL in itself, so it doesn't really work that well. ORMs can be implemented in various ways too, as a syntactically l

But your ORM example could be considered a DSL in itself, so it doesn't really work that well. ORMs can be implemented in various ways too, as a syntactically looking different DSL or as something like objects and method calls or whatever the language already provides. Regexes can be abstracted from exactly by making a more readable DSL. Config files and the stuff accepted therein are small languages as well. What are the alternatives to making little languages?