[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: RE: Auto-completion in editors

• To: 'Joshua Allen' <joshuaa@m...>, "'Bullard, Claude L (Len)'" <clbullar@i...>, "'andrzej@c...'" <andrzej@c...>
• Subject: RE: RE: Auto-completion in editors
• From: Nicolas LEHUEN <nicolas.lehuen@u...>
• Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 21:42:50 +0100
• Cc: "'xml-dev@l...'" <xml-dev@l...>

>-----Message d'origine-----
>De : Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@m...]
>Envoye : mercredi 30 janvier 2002 21:15
>A : Bullard, Claude L (Len); Nicolas LEHUEN; andrzej@c...
>Cc : xml-dev@l...
>Objet : RE:  RE: Auto-completion in editors
>
>A side opinion; I think computer people are the worst in the world for
>always going meta.  Even when we have a clear problem to solve (like,
>implement an accounting system), we always try to attack the meta
>problem and the meta-meta problems first.  I admit that 
>abstraction is a
>good way to attack problems, but taken to far it is a way to avoid
>solving problems while still looking busy.

You're way too much right here. Each time I have to write some kind of
documentation, I first think of how I could generate the document
automatically (e.g. from already existing source code, a la literate
programming), then go meta and think about making an engine that could
receive specification on how to generate the document, etc. etc. It's just
that I can't bear writing a documentation while I know the information is
already there, it just has to be transformed to an understandable form...

Eventually my manager discovers that I'm writing code instead of
documentation, and whack me until I'm back using Word... That's why I'm
asking someone to write a decent XML editor, otherwise I'll have to try to
implement it instead of editing my XML documents with whatever editor I have
at hand.

Maybe computer people are just lazy, and that's the reason why they invented
computers not to have to compute, the von Neuman architecture not to have to
build computers for each task, high-level programming languages not to have
to write programs in assembler, and eventually XML not to have to write
parser code, or is it for anything else :P ?

But the job has to be done nonetheless, and maybe we should give the credit
to people and companies that help computer science and computer people not
to turn into a meta-black-hole (whatever comes at proximity goes meta and
cannot leave). Not looking anywhere in particular...

Regards,
Nicolas

<<application/ms-tnef>>

• Prev by Date: RE: RE: Auto-completion in editors
• Next by Date: RE: ignoring elements in certain namespace in schema?
• Previous by thread: RE: RE: Auto-completion in editors
• Next by thread: RE: RE: Auto-completion in editors
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread