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On 8/25/05, Pete Cordell <petexmldev@tech-know-ware.com> wrote:
> Whether the observations made below represent a genuine move away from XML,
> or represent a small pocket of newly discovered dissenters I don't know.
Neither do I, that's why I'm asking. If these are fragmented domains
in which XML just isn't needed, I don't think XML stakeholders need to
think too hard about how to react to or accomodate JSON. Nobody ever
said that XML was good for everything, just that its network effect
makes it good enough for a lot of things. If the native tools in a
specific environment are more suitable for things like config files
and quickn-n-dirty client/server protocols, I can't think of too many
reasons to suggest XML over than JSON, Python syntax stuff, etc..
Once you start having to talk across platforms, however, you start
getting benefits in return for the XML tax.
Sorry for the unintended slur against XSLT's utility as a "programming
language". Obviously some people can indeed work wonders with it, and
maybe more people should learn to do so. My point is simply that
languages and DSLs that use XML syntax get a lot of resistance from
users, and that cases like XSLT where the XML syntax actually improves
that language for typical use cases are rare. Does anyone disagree
with that?
Thanks to the various people reminding me of YAML ... it was produced
by a spinoff of a spinoff of xml-dev so I should have made the
connection! It hasn't exactly disrupted XML after 5 years or so now,
but I suppose that it could ride Ruby's coattails to hypedom.
As much as part of me would enjoy the show if something like JSON or
YAML disrupts XML from below (in the original Clayton Christensen
sense of providing a simpler/cheaper technology that is good enough
for the typical user of the previous generation and hence kills demand
for the previous generation), I'm extremely skeptical that it will
happen. Few people really have to confront the complexity in the
specs or the ugliness where the various XML technologies rub against
one another. The alternatives make life a lot easier for geeks but
it's not clear to me whether they do anything to help the Pointy
Haired Bosses of the world. Of course, neither did PCs, the internet,
XML, dynamic languages, etc. a few years before they took off, but
they offered a LOT of benefit at a MUCH lower cost than the previous
generation of stuff did. I don't see that order of magnitude
difference between XML and JSON, (or binary XML for that matter),
hence my skepticism.
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