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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: The Best Technologies Don't Win
 From: Eric van der Vlist [mailto:vdv@d...] >Of course, we all know that the best technologies don't win, but I don't really agree with the rest of your mail... Given. >OTH, the web is as tough as a jungle. The applications that survive, elegant or not, are good in their ways and what we >call Web 2.0 is often based on cleaner principles than what we were seeing one of two years ago. >Mediocrity doesn't scale on the web and there seems to be a rather encouraging tendency to go toward simplicity as >illustrated by the success of REST services (even if most of them aren't really RESTful). If they aren't Restful they aren't Restful. The Emperor wears no clothes. Mediocrity scales on the web well because it is recognizable and observable in the same way a pop hit is. It is an example of the level of understanding that is good for one summer and disposed of by midwinter. Simplicity has its place in design but it isn't the answer to all design challenges. Otherwise, you'd be writing with a quill pen on parchment putting it in a leather bag and handing it to a man on a horse to take to a man with pole barge who'd take it to a steam ship bitching every step of the way about how steam was ruining the elegance and simplicity of horse cart transport. The 'worse is better' meme is stupid. It is the defense of mediocrity by those who have yet to achieve anything more memorable or saleable so they try to pull the market into the shape of the undifferentiable mass. It works because the fear of being alone or left out of the crowd dominates intelligent choice and averages it. > We have XSD because it got the most votes at the time. It's that > simple. The damming thing is, that is what the web does, not best or > worst, but simply does at all. Worse is better because that is all it > is capable of. Chalk up another win for objectivism. >The Web hasn't chosen W3C XML Schema. Yes it has. See the W3C specifications. >The Web largely lives without any schema language and when there is one, DTDs are still largely predominant. How odd. DTDs are specified in the one standard the web learned to love to hate because it was too 'complex': SGML. >If we spoke about the Web, I wouldn't bet on W3C XML Schema! There is a tendency in the Web technology stack to reject >over complex specs and I am not sure at all that W3C XML Schema will ever be widely used on the Web. There is a tendancy on the web to burgle the work of others and call that invention. RELAX NG is original work. The web didn't invent it and so far hasn't embraced it. A few intelligent developers have but find they can't get it adopted by the web. Isn't that what these Spy vs Spy threads are really about? You want it. You can't have it. A minority opinion has been effectively stifled. What speaks louder, the web or powerful monied interests? See OpenDoc and Microsoft. Has the web caused the the initiation of a plugin project by Microsoft? Nope. Governments have. Large procurements have. Deep pockets have. Did they listen to the web? Maybe, but in the end, it comes down to directed self-interest, not an abstraction of community. You want better? Do what you are doing. Stand up for it in the town square but don't whine that the will of the web is being stifled because that spits in the face of the very crowd you say you support. >That being said, I agree that W3C XML Schema is dominant in the crowd of "XML enterprise developers" but that's a > relatively small community compared to the Web community. XML Schema dominates the tool stacks and that group of developers is by far larger than the users of RELAX. Furthermore, that group voted with its feet for the W3C as its representative and therefore, approved. Is that the choice of intelligence or is it the fact that what doesn't scale at a moment in time is intelligence? No when we speak of the mass voting, we speak of averaging. Mediocre wins every time. But mediocre evolves as long as it is in play. len 
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