> Computer memory space is not important today.
Completely disagree.
Availability of computer memory is and will always be important, and this is being proven by everyday needs and applications !
With larger available RAM we get new applications that use/require enormous (in yesterday's terms) amount of memory that tests even today's limits. This is what drives making new generations of computers with more and more RAM.
So, on the contrary: today it has become important not to be stopped by the "available memory" barriers.
This is why we use streaming almost everywhere, and XSLT 3.0 for example (not to mention obvious other streaming - needing applications like video (Netflix!!!)) gives us a standard W3C-endorsed normative solution for working with huge (whatever this means at a certain point of time) XML documents.
> The place on the screen is more important if one reads or edits such structured text
If one reads a one-page document, then yes.
But even 22 years ago there were XML documents "big" enough (like Hamlet.xml -- about 200KB) to overflow not one but many computer screens.
This was one of the main driving reasons while we needed something more than reading and intuition in order to be able to navigate through an XML document and ask questions about it and get answers to these questions. This is what gave us XPath, XQuery and XSLT.
And every developer knows about SoC (Separation of concerns), SRP (Single Responsibility Principle), Interface Segregation Principle (Many client-specific interfaces are better than one general purpose interface: no code should be forced to depend on methods it does not use), DRY (Don't repeat yourself).
If we know in advance that some object doesn't have certain properties and abilities, like children, descendants, etc., specifying such properties and abilities for this object contradicts all these principles and is what we call an "antipattern" (a nice synonym for "stupid" and "bloated").
Thanks,
Dimitre
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
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To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk
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Never fight an inanimate object
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To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the
biggest mistake of all
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Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
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You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play
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To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.
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Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
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Typing monkeys will write all Shakespeare's works in 200yrs.Will they write all patents, too? :)
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Sanity is madness put to good use.
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I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.
