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RE: Will Father Moore save us from our sins? - was Re: [xml-de

  • To: 'Michael Champion' <mc@x...>, "xml-dev@l... DEV" <xml-dev@l...>
  • Subject: RE: Will Father Moore save us from our sins? - was Re: Eclipse: the new Emacs? (and the XML story)
  • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 12:38:46 -0500

father moore
What David Megginson posted earlier is pertinent:

"So, really, these tools are suitable only for writing short XML 
configuration files or faqs, not books or manuals.  I'm guessing that the 
problem is an object explosion: the programs probably use Java objects for 
everything, instead of optimizing internal storage with arrays and building 
objects only on demand (it's the same kind of problem that shows up with 
naively-written Java-based DOM libraries)."

Cheap resources invite exploitation.  Then costs rise.
Interesting problem:  what limits production 
and keeps the cost of software within some range?  Offtopic, but...

Even when resources are cheap, discipline is worthy.  This is 
when it is most worthy, not with regard to short term 
economics, but long term health that is harder to come by as 
any system ages and increases its interdependencies.  

As we emphasize scripting solutions for 
building applications, the object costs bite harder.  What 
happens to servers as we thin out the client, for example, 
and give the server lots and lots of middleware objects 
from multiple applications from multiple development teams? 
We offload the problem to the hardware in the form of 
server farms and these in turn, draw heavily on the power grid.

At some point, a cascading failure seems inevitable.

len


From: Michael Champion [mailto:mc@x...]

That's one of the most profound questions the XML world faces, IMHO.  
On the surface the answer is obvious - NO!  It is cheaper to just buy 
memory (maybe even for your customers!)  than to spend time time/speed 
optimizing code or bandwidth.  But on the other hand ....

- Memory, bandwidth, and even processor speed are still precious on 
mobile devices.  Do you want to shut them out of your market?  
Obviously that's not a consideration for Eclipse plugins :-)

- Batteries aren't covered by Moore's Law.  
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/start.html?pg=2 has a nice 
rant on this subject.

- More generally, as the Wired piece implies, there's sortof a tragedy 
of the commons here -- EVERYONE assumes that bandwidth/memory/power is 
inexhaustible, exacerbating the problem in environments where it's a 
limiting factor.

I think all this gets back to the advantages/disadvantages of 
standardization we've been talking about.  XML's text basis, Java's 
virtual machine, Eclipse's loosely coupled architecture all have very 
distinct advantages that are widely touted.  They also have 
disadvantages, mainly in the area of performance/resource overhead.  
It's important not to oversell the advantages to people who are going 
to be hurt by the disadvantages, and it's important to try to 
ameliorate the disadvantages in a way that does not negate the real 
advantages.

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