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Tim Bray On The Origin Of XML
gManZboy writes "Queue just posted an interview with XML co-inventor Tim Bray (currently at Sun Microsystems). Interestingly enough the interviewer is none other than database pioneer Jim Gray (currently at Microsoft). Among other things, in their discussion Tim reveals where the idea for XML actually came from: Tim's work on the OED at Waterloo."
XML sucks ... too verbose for humans and too ambiguous for machines.
One day we'll look back and laugh!
> Then you are not using XML right.
Oh, I have heard this same argument so many times... I still have to see _anyone_ "using XML right".
> For one the format shouldn't be changing much
You really should read The Mythical Man-Month; change is in the essence of software development.
> Converting two thousand numbers to text should take 50 microseconds at the most.
Yes, but what about parsing two thousand XML elements, building their DOM and then going thru it?(and SAX is not much better, not to mention much more limited). If you haven't realized yet the insane overhead of XML parsing you have never had to use XML in any serious production environment.
At risk of repeating myself:
"The essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well." -- Phil Wadler
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
"Lisp S-expressions are a method for storing/expressing data AND code. They have less overhead than XML, solve more problems than XML (comfortably human readable programming languages can also be written in S-expressions, e.g. Scheme and Common Lisp) and they were invented decades earlier."
And they have infix notation, and lots of parenthesis. Blurring the line between data and code is a useful technique, but sometimes the line does need to be enforced. Microsoft has already taught us what happens when you mix the data/code metaphor. Security loopholes all over the place.
XML just being what it is, closes that hole.
What fucking retard modded this to a troll?