So, we should build more compilers. The only limiting factor, I think, is that it's damn hard to design a good DSL that wraps your domain well and is neither too flexible (increasing boilerplate) nor too rigid (increasing workarounds and escape hatch usage).

But generically, a compiler is the exact kind of thing you want when you're doing "Take this data structure and transform it into this other data structure". In a traditional compiler, we usually deserialize the first data structure from a string (parsing), call that data structure a CST, validate the data structure (syntax & type checking), do the transform, then serialize the output.

This kind of validate and transform pattern is all over programming though. And it's pretty easy to test with things like property tests. So yeah, we should build little compilers more as abstraction boundaries in our code.