Re: <quote>XSL is NOT easy</quote>

classical sins:
1. overuse of for-each. The worst ever: match on the root then do a
for each on the document element!! followed by a for-each of every
child of the document element, for-each of each of those etc. it was
for-each all the way down. Matching of attributes using for-each,
comparison of two attributes was done using for-each  down all
attributes until attribute with the name of the to be matched
attribute, save the value of that attribute into a variable, do a
for-each of parent::*/@* until the attribute to be compared with was
found then doing two ifs for if the value matches and if the value
does not match.

I submit that this was the most depraved and perfectly developed
example of a for-each fetish ever discovered in the history of XSL-T.

2.  I once worked with a computer science graduate/programmer, he
didn't just know mainstream languages but also Standard ML and Scheme.
He had been writiing XSL-T for more than a year, and his code was
littered with stuff like
<xsl:if test="count(record) &gt; 0"><xsl:apply-templates
select="record"/></xsl:if>

Cheers,
Bryan Rasmussen

> XSL is NOT easy if
> you want to code professionally in it. It IS easy to use XSL
> but not well. ....

I would agree with this entirely. But then, I think it's true of every other
programming language as well. There is an enormous amount of bad
unmaintainable code being written by self-taught amateur programmers, in all
sorts of languages, and many of them are attracted to languages like XSLT
that look easy at first sight.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/