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RE: how they really feel about XML

• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: how they really feel about XML
• From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>
• Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 10:50:12 -0700
• Thread-index: AcJvohOr5DgcGWsNS9CKSK7+otjLFQAGhdjA
• Thread-topic: how they really feel about XML

XML is overhyped rants are so 2000. 

-- 
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM 
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. 

>  
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 7:41 AM
> To: xml-dev@l...
> 
> Shelley Powers has written a piece called "The Parable of the 
> Languages"
> that I find to be a simultaneously funny and accurate 
> description of the ways in which XML is commonly discussed 
> outside of this community.
> 
> http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000581.php
> 
> Programmers of most stripes will find some entertainment 
> about their own environments, but it's the conclusion that 
> troubles me most but makes me think hardest.
> 
> [few blank lines to avoid spoilers]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It seems to me that there are a few real problems here amidst 
> the humor.  
> 
> First, that XML was hyped up, most particularly as a solution 
> to programmers' problems.  I'm finding more and more over 
> time that XML isn't what programmers are actually looking 
> for, once they get past superficial examples.  Programmers 
> are looking for communications tools that require less work 
> for more communications, and XML sort of covers the "more 
> communications" among environments but not necessarily the 
> "less work" angle.  We now have an ever-growing stack of Web 
> Services junk that claims to offer the "less work" angle, but 
> it seems to have become work in its own category.
> 
> Second, that people think of XML as a programming language.  
> I don't think that "XML as a programming language" is a 
> common theme on this list, but I do get lots of naive email 
> questions pretty much to that effect.  I'm not sure that XML 
> had any business at that gathering of programming languages.
> 
> Finally, to push back on the programming languages, I'm 
> astounded that programmers seem to have such an impossible 
> time wrapping their heads around what markup is actually good 
> for. (I think relational databases had similar problems, but 
> less culture clash.  Tables less alien to computers than 
> documents and all that.)  
> 
> I keep seeing the same old XML-as-object-serialization story 
> that makes XML out to be an excitingly half-baked technology 
> for letting programs talk to programs.  There's no question 
> that XML can be used for that, but it reminds me a bit of a 
> guy who'd written Perl programs which communicated over 
> sockets using a very readable though simple subset of 
> English. It was great for debugging, admittedly.
> 
> Of course, I'm happy to admit that I'm taking a whimsical 
> parable far too seriously, as usual.  It does seem like a 
> good thing to ponder in the context of "XML development", however.
> 
> -------------
> Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
> http://simonstl.com may be my URI
> http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI 
> urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether
> 
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