That's not powerful enough, so you let the config files include conditionals.

NOPE! Nope. That's the too far point. Abort. Abandon ship. Start over.

So this is exactly talking about Nix, Guix, chezmoi?

i prefer referring to greenspun's tenth

That’s excellent. I think the initial momentum towards a DSL is basically equivalent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect

The one I'm familiar with is "Domain Specific Language"

Because every three letter acronym means more than one thing. There are only 17 576 TLA so they are going to be heavily duplicated.

You should almost always spell out acronyms on the first use.

I'm puzzled too. In DSL the "local loop" is the wiring between your house and the nearest central office or concentrator. Kind of like "last mile" but more like "last block or two". So I don't get what "adding loops" would mean.

Besides Domain Specific Language which somebody else refers to in the thread, DSL can also mean Damn Small Linux. Still no clue about adding loops.

Exactly! Making a DSL and using it like a programming language introduces necessities that will not be considered as throughly if they where added to a "real" language.

I once wanted a DSL for a calendar program I was making (so the user could define complex events and stuff). So I made a simple programming language that could be embedded in the program, kinda like how lua is commonly used.

YAML has entered the chat.

So... How about Conway's life for DSL?

You either put it in the DSL or people start writing generators for your DSL.

Looking at you, Gradle