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On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 08:22:16 -0500, Elliotte Harold
<elharo@metalab.unc.edu> wrote:
> These employers may be overly optimistic. Last night I gave an advanced
> XML presentation to a large audience of uber-geek Linux folks. Based on
> post-talk discussion, I suspect only about 30-40% were reasonably
> conversant with XML prior to that evening. If I'd realized that in
> advance I would have pitched the talk at a slightly lower level. It's
> certainly true that XML is more broadly understood in the community than
> it was five years ago. However, I don't think it's yet reached the level
> of ubiquity of C or Java.
It might depend on the audience. A few years ago, I did a major
restructuring of the Open Source FlightGear simulator, moving as much
of the configuration as possible out of the C++ and into XML (the
physics models for aircraft were already using a pseudo-XML, but
everything else was hard-coded). A short while after that, the
contributor base grew enormously, drawing in people with little or no
programming experience but other useful skills, such as 3D modelling,
aerodynamics, etc.
So, in this case, the majority of *coders* know C++ better than XML,
but the majority of *contributors* know only XML. They don't know it
all that well, but XML doesn't have to be hard -- just make sure the
tags match, escape the special characters, quote the attributes, and
remember that names are case sensitive.
All the best,
David
--
http://www.megginson.com/
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