Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
flat earth was very popular as an idea for a while too - even though a minority knew it was absolutely wrong. which brings us to the even deeper topic - why is something popular? dictated by religion? marketing? commercial interests? xml's future is tied up in all these things and more. as is xslt, and sax. rick Nathan Young -X (natyoung - Artizen at Cisco) wrote: > Hi. > > >> Sure that figures _only_ assure us that there exist more >> books on PHP or >> JS than XSLT on Amazon database. >> >> But it is an usual practice in many fields sizing the >> activity/popularity >> in a field from the quantity of stuff is being written about. >> > > It's usual practice in all kinds of fields, especially politics, but > more generally anywhere that uninformed public opinion is assumed to > matter, to choose and present slices of data primarily on the basis of > how well they fit your agenda. > > The three things I've seen argued on this list where a variety of > stastical garbage has been mustered in support of subjective viewpoints > are: > - XSLT is more/less powerful than (technology X) > - XSLT is more/less easy to learn than (technology X) > and now: > - XSLT is more/less popular than (technology X) > > What would we gain by proving a particular answer to any of the above > questions, even assuming such proof was possible? > > ---->N > > >> E.g. more >> papers and books devoted to string theory means that string theory -as >> attempt to quantize gravity- may be more popular than LQG or >> triangulations. Of course, this offers us just an >> orientation; it is not >> law. >> >> >>> Furthermore, "popularity" involves a notion of "preference" >>> >> and should >> >>> be clearly defined before we try to throw figures (the >>> >> figures you give >> >>> seem to be more relevant to "visibility" than "popularity"). >>> >> <blockquote> >> The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the >> popularity of programming languages. The index is updated >> once a month. >> The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of >> skilled engineers, >> courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines >> Google, MSN, >> and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that >> the TPC index >> is not about the best programming language or the language in >> which most >> lines of code have been written. >> </blockquote> >> >> [http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm] >> >> >>> Eric >>> >>> -- >>> GPG-PGP: 2A528005 >>> Lisez-moi sur XMLfr. >>> >>> >> http://xmlfr.org/index/person/eric+van+der+vlist/ >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------- >> ---------- >> >>> Eric van der Vlist http://xmlfr.org >>> >> http://dyomedea.com >> >>> (ISO) RELAX NG ISBN:0-596-00421-4 http://oreilly.com/catalog/relax >>> (W3C) XML Schema ISBN:0-596-00252-1 >>> >> http://oreilly.com/catalog/xmlschema >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------- >> ---------- >> >> >> Juan R. >> >> Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE) >> >> > > > !DSPAM:4500500e193205315134984! > >
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] |
