[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Please stop writing specifications that cannot beparsed/pr
hi all, On Sun, 28 May 2023 07:31:31 +0100 Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote: > Actors always have to be reminded when playing Hamlet that there is at least > one person in the audience who doesn't know the plot. > > I think you are far too complacent about what constitutes universal > knowledge. It might be true that everyone in the English-speaking world over > a certain age knows who Marilyn Monroe was, but how many teenagers in China > know? > this seems like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman or its inverse. as a 6-12 y.o. in telaviv, i had to learn that 9+3 = 12, which Gauss knew when he was 4. https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#website_in_english maintaining drupal/wordprress/etc. sites for non-geeks will drain my time, energy, passion, and money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis . > Contrariwise, I've come across Americans who assume that it is universal > knowledge how many cents make a dime, or what age a child is when they reach > 5th grade, and such assumptions just show how little they know of the world. > > Michael Kay > > > > On 28 May 2023, at 03:38, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > On Sat, 27 May 2023 08:34:38 -0400 > > B Tommie Usdin <btusdin@mulberrytech.com> wrote: > > > >>> On May 27, 2023, at 12:26 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > >>> > >>> I have a hypothesis that such wilfully-ignorant, non-geeky, non-hackery, > >>> people are becoming less influential, less attractive, and rarer ... > >> > >> I am of a different opinion. > >> > >> There are far too many knowable things for anyone to have deep knowledge of > >> all of them. Some people choose to know a little about many things > >> (generalists), some people choose to know a lot about a few things > >> (specialists). Generalists seem to have an easier time in life than > >> specialists. Specialists seem to be the people who get important things > >> done. Slighting specialists because they are not generalists (or > >> specialists in some topic other than their specialty) is unhelpful; > >> insisting that they make the time and devote the energy to learn skills > >> outside their area of expertise is an effort to dilute their genius, and > >> likely to fail. > > > > I discussed generalism vs. specialism in "sherlock holmes about Awk": > > https://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1991.html . noone can or should be a 100% > > specialist unless you expect people to forget that 1+1=2, or that there are > > 12 months in a year. "One does not simply not Know who Marilyn > > Monroe is" [ > > https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/image-macros/indiv-nodes/not_know_marilyn_monroe.xhtml > > ]: > > > > [[ > > > > Some have not heard of Sarah Bernhardt, or Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Ava > > Gardner, or whoever, but everyone has heard of Monroe. > > > > She is, in a sense, a litmus test. > > > > ]] > > > > I know vim/vi fairly well, but dont consider it essential knowledge given > > text is text, and there are many other text editors. > > > > OTOH, I dont know how to cook because I earn much more than 100 USD/day. > > > >> To circle back to the discussion of why standards are written in XML: > >> I want the geeky hackery people to make it so easy to do things we know > >> will be long-term helpful (such as create standards in tractable, > >> long-term stable formats) that the specialists can do it without knowing > >> anything about it. -- Shlomi Fish https://www.shlomifish.org/ Apple Inc. is Evil - https://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/ I want to create a programming language called “Multiply” so people can say “I program in Go, Forth, and Multiply”. — https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/880376410820542466 Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - https://shlom.in/reply .
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