Does SQL or regex as a language rot? I’d say the abstraction above using SQL or regex to implement it rots, because it’s not formalised as a language.

Does the implementation leak through things like JSON or a EBNF grammar? Performance can be a concern but the implementation doesn’t leak through the language unlike a library api. If you have access to the compiler you can adjust the implementation to get whatever performance you’d like without affecting the abstraction.

Edit: JSON is a perfect example of resistance to rot and a good abstraction. You will always be able to read it in any given language because it is a language and not some library. Non DSL code should be considered as compiler output and that is what 99.9% of software devs spend their time writing. They mock people who would write assembly then go and create some fucked type hierarchy in Haskell for some business problem and call it a good abstraction. The complexity just multiplies until we end up with the current state of the industry.