Re: [xml-dev] Memorable quotes from Balisage 2013

[Uche Ogbuji <uche@ogbuji.net>]

On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 8:40 PM, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:

On 8/11/13 8:30 PM, Uche Ogbuji wrote:

So XML experts (I included) are bemoaning the reduced opportunities that
are centered on XML expertise.  Well, guess what, there are no
opportunities at all which are centered around JSON expertise.  We're
lucky to have had our few years, and much of our grousing is just
grass-is-greener misapprehension.

This is interesting.  The JSON "experts" I know - and there are many of them

Don't think I've ever met someone who calls themselves a JSON expert, despite all the industries in which I've worked.  I've seen a lot of people whom *I'd* call a JSON expert, but most of those people I think wouldn't list JSON as one of their foremost skills...

 

- tend to be proud to be paid for their overall work in connecting systems together rather than for their knowledge of JSON per se.

Correct, and ditto for most XML experts I know, who are really overall integrators.  I think that's entirely the point.  These are just different viscosities of glue for integration.

 

They tend to point to the need to "know XML" as a disadvantage of XML.

Sure, and so do SQL experts. And SQL experts tend to point to the need to "know JSON" as a disadvantage of JSON, and so on.  All exactly as I'd expect.

 

If, in Tim Bray's terms, XML should fade into the background like ASCII, then JSON has succeeded better at that fade than XML.

I'm not really sure what it means to fade to the background like ASCII, and I certainly could not imagine either XML or JSON as having done anything that even approximates that description.

But really, I think this is all angels dancing on the head of a pin.  I like XML, and I get to use it a lot, and it's a valued skill where I do my work.  I also tolerate JSON, and I use it sometimes, and it's OK and all, and if others feel they're in the middle of an apocalyptic little-endian/big-endian war over the two somewhere else in the weeds, that's not of too much interest to me.  I'm with James Clark and Norm Walsh: "Meh!"

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