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

[Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org>]

Hi,

On Sun, 28 May 2023 10:57:37 -0400
B Tommie Usdin <btusdin@mulberrytech.com> wrote:

> Nobody is saying you have to maintain sites for non-geeks. You can address
> and serve the population that interests you. 
> 

right.

> The population you care about is not the same as the population that
> interests me. You have decided to exclude from your consideration people you
> characterize as "wilfully-ignorant, non-geeky, non-hackery". The population I
> consider influential, attractive, and growing, includes many people who have
> no knowledge of, interest in, or patience for, many of things I find
> interesting and important and who put their energies in other places.
> 

i dont think every knowledge I acquired and still retain as essential. but I
think English, py3 and XML / X/HTML5 are. And the latter two are not2hard to
learn.

> -- Tommie
> 
> 
> > On May 28, 2023, at 7:57 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote:
> > 
> > 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/
Original Riddles - https://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/

Chuck Norris does not keep any numbers on his mobile phone’s address book.
Instead, he memorised the entire phone directory.
    — https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Chuck-Norris/

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