Re: XSLT model not "natural"? [was Re: [ANN] FreeMarke

I use XSLT a lot and find it to be an elegant and powerful technology.  It
was relatively easy for me to learn, because, I think, I tend to be
open-minded about things and am not married to traditional ways of doing
things.

I've given XSLT tests to a number of people and have had to use XSLT created
by those who work for or with me.  I think most developers do find XSLT
difficult and do not intuitively use the most elegant and powerful parts of
the technology, not because XSLT "is difficult" but because it "is difficult
for most people to think 'out of the box'", especially when they have been
doing things a certain way for a long time or have been taught that "this"
is the way to do it in school.

I other words, I would tend to agree with both of you and your analysis.

Todd


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jonathan Revusky" <jon@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 5:11 AM
Subject: Re:  XSLT model not "natural"? [was Re: [ANN] FreeMarker 2.3
as an alternative to XSLT]


> Wendell Piez wrote:
> > I am sure FreeMarker is a fine and wonderful thing, but I couldn't let
> > this pass unchallenged.... :->
>
> That's fine. It suits my purposes for there to be dialogue on this. I
> have not responded earlier simply because I was too busy moving house.
>
> First of all, you surely understand that my announcement was advocacy
> material and I made my biases quite clear for the reader.
>
> >
> > At 08:13 AM 6/25/2003, Jonathan Revusky wrote:
> >
> >> the underlying procedural logic will come more naturally to most people
> >> than the declarative/functional programming model embodied by XSLT.
> >
> >
> > I've written and taught XSLT extensively, to a wide range of kinds of
> > audiences from hard-core developers to web-heads to professors and
> > graduate students of (natural) languages and literatures.
>
> Well, I can't help but make the casual comment that professors and
> graduate students, i.e. academics, are much more intellectually oriented
> than the general population, and I would say, more likely to be open to
> stretching their minds than the average person.
>
> I would guess that you are a talented teacher and trainer and are good
> at conveying the core concepts to people. However, the fact that you can
> make a living teaching XSLT already suggests that it is not that easy!
>
> >
> > The programming model embodied by XSLT is perfectly "natural" when it's
> > understood for what it is, and not confused with some other model.
>
> The above argument is not very convincing to me. That something is
> natural once you understand it is surely true of any conceptually
> challenging thing. For example, first-year calculus is probably very
> simple when understood for what it is. This does not alter the fact that
> very many people have found calculus very challenging. The idea of
> thinking in terms of limits and convergence, what happens when intervals
> become arbitrarily small, is not something that you can say "comes
> naturally". Also, when you consider that many people never properly
> understood high-school algebra...
>
>
> > It
> > doesn't take a CS degree to understand it: in fact the beauty of the
> > declarative approach, as Mike Kay just pointed out in another thread, is
> > that it takes so much of the "nonsense" of programming the machine off
> > the table (not nonsense to the machine, to be sure, but oh what a bore),
> > by letting the implementor of the engine take care of it so the
> > stylesheet writer doesn't have to think about it.
> >
> > I submit that Jonathan's claim is true only for a subset of the
> > potential user base of XSLT -- namely those who can't or don't (for
> > whatever reason)
>
> I fear that your statements are hovering dangerously close to the
> tautological: "XSLT comes 'naturally' to the subset of people to whom it
> comes naturally. It does not come naturally to the subset of people to
> whom it does not come 'naturally'...."
>
> > take the time to come to grips with what's different
>
> If you have to take the time to "come to grips" with something, then it
> doesn't "come naturally".
>
> > about it, and what makes it so powerful and effective at doing what it
> > does well. Perhaps, in the day of Perl and Javascript hacking, when
> > people so often shortcut their learning in order to get something rigged
> > up and out the door (i.e. there's a lot of pound-foolishness to go with
> > all the penny-wisdom), this is a larger subset than one would like ...
> > but it is by no means true that everyone finds XSLT difficult.
>
> I never stated that "everyone" finds XSLT difficult. Though I was
> writing advocacy material, I nonetheless chose my words carefully. I
> like to state things that I consider to be true. I was careful to say
> that the FreeMarker template language would "probably" come "more
> naturally" to "most people".
>
> I have little doubt that this is true.
>
> > I have
> > witnessed more than one "non-programmer" jump out of their chairs with
> > excitement on discovering how "easy" XSLT is....
>
> That somebody is discovering how easy XSLT is means that they had a
> preconceived idea that XSLT was quite difficult. IOW, I sense a tacit
> admission of the fact that XSLT has a reputation for being difficult.
>
> This leads to the question of why XSLT has such a reputation. How did it
> get such a "bum rap"? OTOH, such preconceived ideas, even obnoxious
> stereotypes, typically have at least some basis in the truth. If XSLT
> has a reputation for being difficult, I doubt that this is just a
> calumny invented out of whole cloth.
>
> My belief is that there could well be interest in an easier alternative
> to XSLT -- an alternative that is at least easier for the subset
> (however small or large) of people who find XSLT difficult. (You do
> yourself recognize the existence of this subset of people.)
>
> If I were in an IT department or company that hired various web page
> design types, and we needed technology for transforming XML, I have to
> say that I would guffaw at the idea of trying to train typical web
> design people to use XSLT. I would suspect that there are very mixed
> experiences out there in this regard. An alternative that could be
> easier for people to learn might well be attractive to people.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Jonathan Revusky
> --
> lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
> Transform XML with FreeMarker, http://freemarker.org/docs/xgui.html
>
> >
> > Regards,
> > Wendell
> >
> >
> >
> > ======================================================================
> > Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
> > 17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
> > Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
> > Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >   Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
> > ======================================================================
> >
> >
> > XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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