Re: [xml-dev] JSON - The Fat Free Alternative - Redux

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 09/30/2014 03:34 PM, Michael Kay wrote:
> I think the "fat" referred to by the phrase "fat-free alternative to
> XML" has very little to do with data size, it has much more to do with
> complexity: the fact that the JSON specification fits on one sheet of
> paper, whereas XML extends to thousands of pages if you include the
> whole stack.
I had a few too many conversations with programmers which ran like:

ME: What's so hard about parsing a tree?

PROG: The tree part is easy.  The hard part is knowing what it all means.

ME: Sure - but doesn't that get simpler when you get familiar with the 
markup languages you use?

PROG: Familiar?  What do you mean?  I feed the schema to the program, 
and then I spend forever trying to figure out why things won't validate.

ME: Do you ask the person who sent you the document?

PROG: Sure, but sometimes it's my own code that won't create content 
that matches the schema, and then I have to know all the details.

ME: Have you tried looking through sample documents?

PROG: Sure, and they validate.  Then I try to do something sliobscure 
type and sequence issuesghtly different and I can't figure out why 
slightly different doesn't validate. [Lists corner cases, cites 
half-remembered specifications, sputters.]

ME: Sounds painful.

That's one relatively small component of a much larger repeated 
conversation, but it was probably the most frequent part of it from 
about 2001-2006.  Yes, I've heard echoes of the same conversation around 
JSON schemas as well.  No, of course I don't think they're approaching 
the challenge or the standards the right way, but it keeps happening.

(I had plenty of difficult conversations before XML Schema dominated, 
but with a different cast of mostly tool-related challenges.)

Thanks,
Simon