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XML Co-Creator says XML Is Too Hard For Programmers
orangerobot writes "Tim Bray, one of the co-authors of the original XML 1.0 specification has a new entry on his website explaining why he's been feeling unsatisified lately with XML and says his last experience writing code for handling XML was 'irritating, time-consuming, and error-prone.' XML has always a divided response among the technical community. The anti-XML community has several sites stating their positions."
Sounds like visual basic programmers are complaining or something.
This is my sig. The post is over.
They should only be glad not to be coding cobol, intercal or befunge!
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
The last book on XML I read and understood was XML for Dummies.
XML is like:
* SGML without configurability
* HTML without forgivingness
* LISP without functions
* CSV without flatness
* PDF without Acrobat
* ASN.1 without binary encodings
* EDI without commercial semantics
* RTF without word-processing semantics
* CORBA without tight coupling
* ZIP without compression or packaging
* FLASH without the multimedia
* A database without a DBMS or DDL or DML or SQL or a formal model
* A MIME header which does not evaporate
* Morse code with more characters
* Unicode with more control characters
* A mean spoilsport, depriving programmers the fun of inventing their own syntaxes during work hours
* The first step in Mao's journey of a thousand miles
* The intersection of James Clark and Oracle
* The common ground between Simon St. L and Henry Thomson
* The secret love child of Uche and Elliotte
* Microsoft's secret weapon against Sun's Open Office
* Sun's secret weapon against Microsoft's Office
* The town bicycle
arggh!!! fuck'in XML tags!! lol
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="bork">
<troll>
<sovietrussiathing>In SOVIET RUSSIA, XML standardizes YOU!!</sovietrussiathing>
<offtopic>Let's bomb the french!</offtopic>
<flamebait>Anyway, XML is for loosers!</flamebait>
</troll>
On the 1st of January, 2003, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine.
Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective view of twelve years of object-oriented design, using the language he created.
By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these things, there was a leak.
Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews.
Interviewer: Well, it's been a few years since you changed the world of software design, how does it feel, looking back?
Stroustrup: Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before you arrived. Do you remember? Everyone was writing 'C' and, the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it. Universities got pretty good at teaching it, too. They were turning out competent - I stress the word 'competent' - graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's what caused the problem.
Interviewer: Problem?
Stroustrup: Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol?
Interviewer: Of course, I did too
Stroustrup: Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods. Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty.
Interviewer: Those were the days, eh?
Stroustrup: Right. So what happened? IBM got sick of it, and invested millions in training programmers, till they were a dime a dozen.
Interviewer: That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year, to the point where being a journalist actually paid better.
Stroustrup: Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers.
Interviewer: I see, but what's the point?
Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10, you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things. They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain your sanity.
Interviewer: You're kidding...?
Stroustrup: Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem. Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn?
Interviewer: You bet I do, that's what I used to do.
Stroustrup: OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew about DOS to earn a decent living too.
Interviewer: I don't believe you said that...
Stroustrup: Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I thought it would.
Interviewer: So how exactly did you do it?
Stroustrup: It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a brain can see that object-oriented programming is counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient.
Interviewer: What?
Stroustrup: And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear of a company re-using its code?
Interviewer: Well, never, actually, but...
Stroustrup: There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the early days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor Graphi
Admitting something is too hard is too hard for programmers.
Now I'll go read the article.
Repeat after me:
You don't overload whitespace.
You don't overload whitespace.
You don't overload whitespace.
You don't overload whitespace.