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Re: Hello XQuery ... Goodbye XSLT?

• To: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
• Subject: Re: Hello XQuery ... Goodbye XSLT?
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 15:34:36 -0500
• Cc: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <4190028D.6080409@z...>
• References: <200411081326.iA8DQXR27673@s...> <e3a5cb2c041108065521cfce84@m...> <4190028D.6080409@z...>
• User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913)

Rick Marshall wrote:
> this is a very interesting observation of yours michael. it harks back 
> to the early days of 3gl programming and the introduction of recursive 
> algorithms to languages like algol/pascal/c. programmers then (and 
> probably now) have difficulty with recursion. i'm sure if you take any 
> set of programs and anlayse them for recursive opportunities you will 
> find they exist but hardly ever exploited.
[!!! snip !!!]
> xslt is by definition a recursive style of programming which will appeal 
> to a small group of disturbed individuals like myself, but on the whole 
> it won't. it's inevitable that non-recursive procedural syntaxes will be 
> proposed to replace it and will prevail.

But probably not for writing stylesheets that convert TEI or DocBook - 
and one of the reasons is that these tasks are more easily done using a 
highly recursive approach.

> it would probably be very good to get the w3c to have the standards / 
> techniques we use examined by psychologists to get some perspective on 
> how well mortal programmers (let alone others) will be able to 
> comprehend and then use the standards and tools devoloped.

Are you suggesting that no standards organization should develop a 
language that uses recursion if most programmers don't find recursion easy?

Jonathan

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Hello XQuery ... Goodbye XSLT?
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>

• References:
  • Hello XQuery ... Goodbye XSLT?
    • From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
  • Re: Hello XQuery ... Goodbye XSLT?
    • From: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>
  • Re: Hello XQuery ... Goodbye XSLT?
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>

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