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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The Power of Groves
 On Fri, 11 Feb 2000 19:06:42 +0000, you wrote: >What we also need is a critical mass of people who believe enough to make >it happen - by writing systems that are abstract enough and generic enough >and useful enough that they self-replicate. Eliot tried very hard to >respond to this by writing Phyllis. I believe in Eliot's vision (and his >co-believers). But until there is a tool which solves a sufficient number >of my problems quickly, I will probably flounder along by writing ad hoc >solutions for each problem. I'm not at all confident that we'll ever reach the point that creating data abstractions becomes a point-and-click operation that anyone can do without some experience in the art. There are many real-world analogies: Anyone can understand how to buy an airline ticket and use it to get from Seattle to Miami. Understanding how to design and build the aircraft that implements that flight is another thing entirely. We all rely on a huge number of domain experts to take care of all of the complex details for us; I don't see how managing complex data processing issues is going to be any different. Certainly, we will continue to see new tools that allow relatively inexperienced people to perform relatively complex tasks with their computers. But rather than becoming more and more generic, I expect that those tools will become more and more specialized. It's the only way to solve the otherwise intractable problem of putting a fairly simple user interface on top of the very intricate "engine" that underlies it. XML Schema and the like will (hopefully) give us the tools to be more _efficient_, but I don't see any real evidence that they will make the job substantially _easier_. -Steve Schafer 
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