Re: [xml-dev] Please stop writing specifications that cannot beparsed/pr

[Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org>]

Hi all,

On Sat, 27 May 2023 08:34:38 -0400
B Tommie Usdin <btusdin@mulberrytech.com> wrote:

> > On May 27, 2023, at 12:26 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote:
> > 
> > I have a hypothesis that such wilfully-ignorant, non-geeky, non-hackery,
> > people are becoming less influential, less attractive, and rarer ...  
> 
> I am of a different opinion. 
> 
> There are far too many knowable things for anyone to have deep knowledge of
> all of them. Some people choose to know a little about many things
> (generalists), some people choose to know a lot about a few things
> (specialists). Generalists seem to have an easier time in life than
> specialists. Specialists seem to be the people who get important things done.
> Slighting specialists because they are not generalists (or specialists in
> some topic other than their specialty) is unhelpful; insisting that they make
> the time and devote the energy to learn skills outside their area of
> expertise is an effort to dilute their genius, and likely to fail.
> 

I discussed generalism vs. specialism in "sherlock holmes about Awk":
https://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1991.html . noone can or should be a 100%
specialist unless you expect people to forget that 1+1=2, or that there are 12
months in a year. "One does not simply not Know who Marilyn
Monroe is" [
https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/image-macros/indiv-nodes/not_know_marilyn_monroe.xhtml
]:

[[

Some have not heard of Sarah Bernhardt, or Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Ava
Gardner, or whoever, but everyone has heard of Monroe.

She is, in a sense, a litmus test.

]]

I know vim/vi fairly well, but dont consider it essential knowledge given text
is text, and there are many other text editors.

OTOH, I dont know how to cook because I earn much more than 100 USD/day.
 
> To circle back to the discussion of why standards are written in XML: 
> I want the geeky hackery people to make it so easy to do things we know will
> be long-term helpful (such as create standards in tractable, long-term stable
> formats) that the specialists can do it without knowing anything about it. 
> 
> Our win will come not when we bully the ignorant into learning our way but
> when we make our way easy, invisible, and attractive to people who are paying
> attention to other things. 
> 
> -- Tommie 
> 
> =================================================================================== 
> B. Tommie Usdin			mailto: btusdin@mulberrytech.com
> Mulberry Technologies, Inc.	https://www.mulberrytech.com
> Phone: 301/315-9631
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mulberry Technologies, Inc.: A Consultancy Specializing in XML for Prose
> Documents
> ===================================================================================
> 
> 
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-- 

Shlomi Fish       https://www.shlomifish.org/
The Human Hacking Field Guide - https://shlom.in/hhfg

If you have the same ideas as everybody else, but have them one week earlier
than everyone else — then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have
them five years earlier, you will be named a lunatic. ( Barry Jones )

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