Let's consider the original list. It starts with DSLs. Are we saying that using SQL 'almost never works'? Shader languages? BPF? If I squint a bit i'd say that

Let's consider the original list. It starts with DSLs. Are we saying that using SQL 'almost never works'? Shader languages? BPF? If I squint a bit i'd say that all the inference engines are either DSLs or APIs which wrap an underlying DSL, so TensorFlow etc. I could probably come up with similar examples from the rest of the list. If the message is 'system ideas which seem simple but are hard, so you should only use existing off the shelf examples of' then i'd certainly have more sympathy for the statement.