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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The XML Backlash
 On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 10:34:39 -0600, Bullard, Claude L (Len) <len.bullard@i...> wrote: > > Are we at the emergence point of an XML backlash? I've been expecting such a backlash for about 5 years now. The namespaces discussion on various threads reminded me of a rant I indulged in when I first began to think that the complexity and inconsistency in the XML corpus was hopeless http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sml-dev/message/59 ). [the reference is to a DOM WG meeting during the Level 2 days] "6 -- count 'em -- SIX hours of discussion on how to resolve the mess that is created when parsed entities meet namespaces. And they probably took another six hours off my life because of the chocolate consumed to fight the depression and caffeine consumed to fight the urge to sleep. And we ended up deciding to essentially put up a sign saying "There Be Dragons There" because the problems are too complex to solve without mandating a lot of machinery that would serve little purpose but to present a pretty face on a very, very ugly mess." BUT 5 years later, XML still marches on -- it's OFF the Gartner hype cycle because it is so widely accepted. http://www4.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=120920 The peasants haven't rebelled, and I don't see many signs that they are about to. The complaints in the various postings Len forwarded are not exactly new, and are mainly from the equivalent of bohemian intellectuals, not the oppressed peasantry :-) Many are already enshrined as xml-dev permathreads. The "LISP could do everything XML does 30 years ago" argument is not new either. It is beside the point, however: for whatever reason, XML has become establisned as a ubiquitous standard and has got the network effect working in its favor, the other possibilities such as LISP and ASN.1 never did. Maybe we would have been better off if they had, but we'll never know. So will the backlash ever begin? I'm of two minds, as usual: On one hand, maybe never -- sensible people can avoid most of the nasty problems by just sticking to a simple, sane, subset of XML and the other specs. It's only the corners that have the ugly messes in them, and there are plenty of Here Be Dragons signs up that anyone who reads mailing lists such as this know about, and others learn about the hard way. Maybe in the long run the W3C or somebody will bless the sane/common subset and the corner cases will fade from memory. On the other hand, maybe it's already underway. The web services people just quietly banished DTDs (and with them all the entity-related dragons) from the kingdom, and nobody but a few purists seriously complained. Likewise, the wireless people are quietly working on binary XML-like formats and may standardize on them with or without the W3C's imprimatur. Given the relative growth rates of mobile and desktop devices, it's a safe bet that the server-side folks will support any wireless industry XML-like standards if they get momentum, again with or without the W3C. It is at least plausible that these kinds of efforts will lead us to the point where SGML was in 1996, and a collaborative, sanctioned effort to create something new out of the lessons of XML will get traction. I wonder if there are analogous cases in the history of technolgy (ahem, besides SGML?) where a set of good ideas got out of control. If so, what happened? Did people just learn to ignore the cruft and stick with what worked without worrying about it? Did the mess get refactored back into the good ideas plus whatever was learned on the way ? Did the whole thing -- wheat, chaff, babies, bathwater -- get replaced by something else? A few possibilities to chew on: Computer languages -- clearly new ones replace older ones, stealing whatever good ideas they offered (although of course the old ones live on ... I *know* how much COBOL there is out there!). Clearly this falls into the "baby and bathwater both get chucked out" category. The Intel computer architecture. It looked pretty hideous the last I even tried to deal with assembly level programming in the late '80s ... did that horrible 16-bit segmented addressing mode stuff get factored out, hidden away, quietly ignored, or what? My guess is that this falls into the "mess gets gradually refactored" category. ??? Windows APIs -- This might be a particularly good historical example to learn from ... Obviously the early versions had serious limitations, but it was not economically feasible to simply kill them off and move on. As I understand it there's an ongoing struggle between the need not to break existing applications and to move forward in a better direction. I'm not sure what the lesson for XML is, other than "whatever you do will make SOME substantial group of people VERY mad". I guess Windows exhibits all three categories: Users learn to avoid the dragons, some parts of MS work on refactoring things without breaking too many legacy apps, and some parts of MS proceed forward with new APIs that don't attempt to maintain compatibility ??? Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a clear pattern ... but the one thing that XML lacks that the Intel and Windows examples had was somebody taking the lead on the refactoring. The sense I get from most discussions with XML geeks is "we're stuck with the whole thing ; we can't ever do anything that will break ANYBODY" rather than "we have to map out a migration path that gets us to a better place with the least disruption." I much prefer the latter. Some early adopters will suffer if the bits of XML that turned out to be bad ideas are factored out, but in the long run we will all be better off. The alternative isn't the XML status quo, it's fighting the backlash and losing. Usual disclaimer -- my opinion, not any past or future employer's. 
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