We should Stop Claiming Generality in our Domain-Specific Language Papers

Abstract

Our community believes that new domain-specific languages should be as general as possible to increase their impact. However, I argue in this essay that we should stop claiming generality for new domain-specific languages. More general domain-specific languages induce more boilerplate code. Moreover, domain-specific languages are co-developed with their applications in practice, and tend to be specific for these applications. Thus, I argue we should stop claiming generality in favor of documenting how domainspecific language based software development is beneficial to the overall software development process. The acceptance criteria for scientific literature should make the same shift: accepting good domain-specific language engineering practice, instead of the next language to rule them all. ACM CCS 2012Software and its engineering → Domain specific languages; Software development methods;General and reference → General literature;