Re: [xml-dev] RE: Proposal: a building block approach to XML design

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

David Lee scripsit:

> [P]eople have not been able to come up with highly reusable data objects.

That's because design with reusable data is still in its infancy.

> But my perspective is that how people dont make "real" things out of
> lego except maybe works of art to prove its possible,

To quote myself:

   When I ask a builder to construct a house for me, I do not expect him
   to begin by cutting down trees [or quarrying stone], digging clay for
   bricks, and mining iron ore for nails and screws.  Nor do I expect
   him to reinvent drywall from first principles.

> Perhaps in time it could be done.   In the physical world this slowly
> happened as people started standardizing on things like screw sizes,
> chipsets, dimensional lumber ..  But it has taken a long long time
> for this to happen.

Just so.  But the future of computers is longer than their past, at least
we all hope so.

> Maybe it can happen in software ? 

I already program quite frequently with very high level, yet simple,
reusable components -- Unix CLI programs.

-- 
It was dreary and wearisome.  Cold clammy winter still held way in this
forsaken country.  The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark
greasy surfaces of the sullen waters.  Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed
up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers.
        --"The Passage of the Marshes"          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan