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

RE: Painful USA Today article (was RE: ANN: RESTTuto

• To: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@m...>
• Subject: RE: Painful USA Today article (was RE: ANN: RESTTutorial)
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 08:17:35 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

On Tue, 21 May 2002, Joshua Allen wrote:

> On the other hand, the availability of tools and products for XML has
> lagged pretty badly, making it hard for the progress-minded CEO to find
> things to spend money on.  

No, Joshua.  That answer is precisely the "problem" not the solution. 
Tools aren't what we lack.  Applications are what we lack.  You and 
possibly a lot of this list are in the tools business.  As once 
said here, "We build the tools to build the tools and sell the 
tools we build."  That is the software building market and it is 
actually not the market of interest to those the USA article has 
in mind.  XML in and of itself is not a very interesting or compelling 
technology.  Only the things we DO with it are.

I see a world of consultants and trainers out there who teach well-formedness, 
a bit of SGML bashing, some brain dead XSLT transforming, and in advanced 
classes, a few snippets of schemas.   They don't explain why one would ever 
want to use XML given the abundance of other solutions.  It makes no sense 
to the CEO out of the box except to say "well, everyone is doing it" and 
that is precisely the hyped stupidity that got SGML in trouble, object-oriented 
programming in trouble, AI in trouble and a lot of otherwise valuable but 
almost failed emerging tech.

> The complication in the specs only makes it
> more difficult for vendors to produce products that people can overbuy.

That's true but that is also our fault (we being all of us who keep 
rerationalizing the specifications).   It is very hard for this 
group to see it, but the market doesn't give a rats behind about 
this problem.  They want solutions for their specific businesses. 
They do not want abstractions; they want physical touch and feel 
I understand it because I recognize it solutions.

len

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: RE: Painful USA Today article (was RE: ANN: RESTTutorial)
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

• Prev by Date: RE: RE: Painful USA Today article (was RE: AN N: RESTTutorial)
• Next by Date: Re: ANN: REST Tutorial
• Previous by thread: RE: RE: Painful USA Today article (was RE: ANN: RESTTutorial)
• Next by thread: Re: RE: Painful USA Today article (was RE: ANN: RESTTutorial)
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread