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RE: Create a special purpose programming language, inXML, usin

• From: David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>
• To: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
• Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 15:28:01 +0000

>>> No, don't try to make sense of it, that way lies madness. . Relax and let go.

Thank you ! NOW I know why I am insane.
Most of my XSLT experience derives from having to fix other peoples XSLT.
Like this one, for example

   http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForIndustry/DataStandards/StructuredProductLabeling/UCM362812.zip


( One project involved getting this to work at all in XSLT 2.0, and another converting the above to produce plain text in a nice readable format).

By the time I could figure out WTF was going on, and where some text was output or not and why I had the whole fricken
monster delicately balanced in my brain ready to explode with the loony bin on speed dial.
I have never had the experience of being able to "Relax and let go." ... because the whole thing was a broken tangled mess until I completely comprehended each convoluted line ... which would only happen after hours and days of painful debugging.    At which point (when the whole thing finally worked ... well enough to pass the regression tests) it would take a gun to my head to try again.

Maybe if I got to start from scratch it would go better ... but now I know XQuery so well, and XSLT 3.0 looks so much like XQuery with a lot of more angle brackets thrown in to confuse me I dont bother.
And my work nowadays doesnt typically involve writing large custom transformations that would leverage the unique strengths of XSLT over XQuery.

Thanks for the explanation though, it makes more sense to me now.

-David

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using state transitions
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>

• References:
  • Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using statetransitions
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using state transitions
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
  • RE: Create a special purpose programming language, inXML, using state transitions
    • From: David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using state transitions
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
  • RE: Create a special purpose programming language, inXML, using state transitions
    • From: David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using state transitions
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>