Good DSL are hard and expensive to design and maintain. Look at the good example of DSL in comments here. They are not small project with small workforce.
If not very limited, a DSL is an ambitious project (if very limited a GUI will surely do a better Job).
Developers should think twice before writing a DSL for "non-programmers"
Nonsense. Making a good DSL is easy. I’ve built production DSLs that users adore.
What’s hard is finding developers who know the domain and its users in the first place. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t understand the problem space. And most devs don’t understand shit except how to turn it off and on again, nor are they willing to learn. So if your average professional university-educated programmer can’t even get a simple turnkey CRUD app right, what chance of them delivering a tool that successfully hands those keys to its users?
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Go read the “Collaborative Work Practices” chapter of “A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing” by Bonnie A Nardie that describes how basic users, expert users, and trained developers can develop their own software tools together, where each layer supports and educates the layers above and below it.
And then count the number of programmers you know who’d embrace working like that. Sadly I doubt you’ll run out of fingers.
