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

[Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org>]

hi all,

On Sun, 28 May 2023 07:31:31 +0100
Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:

> Actors always have to be reminded when playing Hamlet that there is at least
> one person in the audience who doesn't know the plot.
> 
> I think you are far too complacent about what constitutes universal
> knowledge. It might be true that everyone in the English-speaking world over
> a certain age knows who Marilyn Monroe was, but how many teenagers in China
> know?
> 

this seems like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman or its inverse.
as a 6-12 y.o. in telaviv, i had to learn that 9+3 = 12, which Gauss knew when
he was 4. https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#website_in_english

maintaining  drupal/wordprress/etc. sites for non-geeks will drain my time,
energy, passion, and money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis .

> Contrariwise, I've come across Americans who assume that it is universal
> knowledge how many cents make a dime, or what age a child is when they reach
> 5th grade, and such assumptions just show how little they know of the world.
> 
> Michael Kay
> 
> 
> > On 28 May 2023, at 03:38, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote:
> > 
> > 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. 




-- 

Shlomi Fish       https://www.shlomifish.org/
Apple Inc. is Evil - https://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/

I want to create a programming language called “Multiply” so people can say
“I program in Go, Forth, and Multiply”.
    — https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/880376410820542466

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