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i know you will probably think this arrogant and perhaps personal, and
you can beat me up on this if you wish, but this interview seems to me
to be simply a display of ignorance.
in fact i seem to remember similar reactionary comments when new and
dangerous languages such as algol started to replace the establishment
languages of assembler, fortran and cobol.
not to mention the gnashing of teeth, sackcloth and ashes that
accompanied the introduction of relational databases.
xml is rapidly becoming the universal language of the web, and therefore
to some extent of computing itself. in a few years i believe we will
look back on some of this much like we can now look back on the algol
and relational databases as the start of a new generation of computing.
xml, it seems to me, is very basic computer science. the computing
community is moving toward a standard for information interchange that
is unparalleled in the history of mankind. it is perhaps as significant
to our industry, as the printing press was to books. although i'd
entertain an argument that the web itself holds that position.
why are xml documents the basis of an enormous mess? isn't it good that
they they are being created at a high rate (alarming suggesting that
this might be a bad thing...)? why on earth will they haunt our
industry? i could understand that if they were in processor specific
binary codes, but xml is clear text. and it is my humble opinion that
the participants on this list at least have more than a passing interest
in computer science.
i have quite a different viewpoint on all these matters, as no doubt
this list is aware.
first and foremost it's a psychological problem at the moment.
programmers are control freaks. they like to detail each step of what is
to happen. translated, there are calculus based languages (my own
unibase (www.zenucom.com/unibase) is such a beast and so was quel, but
programmers overwhelmingly prefer procedural/algebra languages - sql,
java, c, c++, etc. i think this is because algebra is explicit.
"Hierarchies and collections are pretty much the only tools we've got to
define how things relate to each other and how they should be organized
into manageable structures." ted codd is no doubt turning in his not yet
cold grave over this statement. where did the last 30 years of computer
science go?
where i come from xml is significantly changing data interchange and
laying the foundation for a generation of programmers to work with truly
non-procedural ideas.
rick
On Sat, 2004-02-14 at 20:47, Dimitre Novatchev wrote:
> From:
>
> http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Interviews/livschitz_qa.html
>
> "The world has gone crazy with XML and then web services; SOAP and UDDI are
> getting enormous attention, and, yet, from a software engineering
> standpoint, they seem to me a setback rather then a step forward.
> We now have a generation of young programmers who think of software in terms
> of square brackets. An enormous mess of XML documents that are now being
> created by enterprises at an alarming rate will be haunting our industry for
> decades. With all that excitement, no one seems to have the slightest
> interest in basic computer science."
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dimitre Novatchev,
> FXSL developer,
>
> http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL
> Resume: http://fxsl.sf.net/DNovatchev/Resume/Res.html
>
>
>
>
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