On 11/15/2013 04:32 PM, Steve Newcomb wrote:
>
> On 11/15/2013 03:29 PM, Michael Sokolov wrote:
>
>> There's [obsessive-compulsive disorder] stuff in the XML world too, and it was there right from the
>> start, it just has a different flavor: DTD. The whole "DOCTYPE must be
>> conveyed with the document" religion created the concept of a document
>> that isn't complete without being processed by its accompanying DTD.
>> The result is a programmer's nightmare, but makes sense to a certain
>> kind of document purist.
> You can call me disparaging names like "document purist" and "OCD
> sufferer", but I have quite a different perspective on these things.
>
> The W3C completely misunderstood SGML's single most important feature
> when they dismissed the DTD formalism from their thinking about XML.
> The DTD syntax was never about machines. It was about human beings, and
> it is still, even today, and as crummy as it is, the most humane way
> available for human beings to communicate about data design in a diverse
> collaborative environment that inevitably must include non-programmers.
>
> It was, and it remains today, a fantastically costly error to think that
> software could ever fill the role that the dread <!DOCTYPE... *still*
> plays in the real world. Whose software? Running in whose environment?
> Who gets to edit the product of the discussion? What is the tangible
> form of the product under discussion? How do you phrase a question that
> was unanticipated by any software's design? How do you train every
> stakeholder in the deep magic of the software, sufficient to allow
> everyone to pose a problem or solution? Summarize conflicting
> positions? Craft a technical solution to a political problem? Create a
> technically stable, predictable, toothy agreement out of chaos? Do
> eye-parsing in a fractious, sweaty committee environment, so at the very
> least everyone can plainly see what they're arguing about?
>
> Consider what would have happened if, even as little as 2 years ago, all
> the stakeholders in the ACA rollout were given 6 months to agree on the
> structure of the information that they were supposed to interchange,
> with the result being a set of DTDs. I claim that today, at the very
> least, we would all know exactly who the actual sabotageurs, deadheads
> and incompetents in our midst are. And we would likely have a working
> (albeit, um, suboptimal) healthcare system in the U.S. There is nothing
> like compact text that human beings can parse with their eyes,
> regardless of whether they know anything about text processing. That's
> what the DTD formalism *still* provides today.
>
> If the purpose of a programmer's task is to make machines facilitate
> human communication, nobody should care how hard that task is, least of
> all the programmers. While laziness is definitely a virtue in
> programmers, the stovepipe priesthood is merely vicious when it
> sacrifices the purpose of the task on the altar of its own convenience.
> Len Bullard was very correct to point that out, although his euphemisms
> didn't put it as plainly as I put it to you now. Human communication
> (and there's no other kind of communication) is an extremely demanding
> mistress. She withholds her favors readily and often, but not at all
> capriciously.
>
> By the way, I still program every day for a living, and I spent almost
> two decades of my life developing international standards for data
> processing in tough, sweaty committee environments.
>
> Steve Newcomb
>
Thanks, Steve. I guess Pete's dichotomy of pot-smoking hippy vs. OCD
might not have a category for you! I was merely pointing out that there
are markup dogmas and there are programming dogmas. Both are probably
born out of valid concerns. I do agree that human concerns are often
more important than efficiency or processing concerns, but human
concerns are also often petty and/or political, and sometimes need to be
informed by practical considerations, like ease (or possibility) of
implementation given a set of constraints.
Also, it's besides the point -- and maybe I misunderstood you -- but I
doubt we would have a working healthcare system even if the ACA web app
worked fine. The ACA is a band-aid, or maybe a first step, in my view
-- it doesn't go nearly far enough. But that's waaay off-topic. sorry.
-Mike
