Re: [xml-dev] Parsing XML with anything but

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

> 
> Seriously.  Stop before you write that again about anyone, much less whole categories of less enlightened programmers.
> 

There are a large number of people asking questions on StackOverflow who appear to be practising programmers, yet clearly have inadequate training for the job they are doing. If they were plumbers or electricians, I would not want them in my house, and I would not expect them to get the certification that allowed them to practise. They are cowboys, and there are far too many of them in our profession.

There's another category of people out there who have acquired expertise in one area of technology and are straying outside that into new territory. They have a tendency to try and apply the tools and techniques they already know to tasks where different tools and techniques would be better suited. Sometimes they are aware they are doing this (I do the same myself, often). There can be good justification for this, because learning new tools is an expensive one-time cost, and proliferation of tools within a project is also expensive long-term. These people are not cowboys, but sometimes they are making poor technical choices.

Michael Kay
Saxonica