Comments on: Why XML is Bad for Humans

By: John "Z-Bo" Zabroski

John "Z-Bo" Zabroski — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:58:29 +0000

@For starters, XML is unlike any other programming language (or a natural language). Consider a basic XML construct: value. In any other language it would’ve been written as “name=value” (or “name:=value”, or something similar). An assignment is a construct familiar to most of us from math, even though we may not understand the intricacies of r-value versus l-value. It is intuitive. XML relegates this basic construct to attributes that can only be used as part of an element.

I recommend anyone who creates an XML vocabulary for a DSL read Elliotte Rusty Harold’s Effective XML. Also, Microsoft created a pretty awesome XML language that is very similar to Lisp s-expressions: XAML. If only Spring and Spring.NET understood how awesome this format was, It also includes built-in support for data binding. However, it breaks from traditional SAX and DOM parsing models, so people outside .NET see it as non-standards conforming, regardless of its goodness.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:13:17 +0000

Unfortunately, XML has become to platform neutrality (e.g., SOA, containers, etc.) what Windows has become to desktops and laptops: a necessary, though sometimes evil, standard. Any old text-based language that expresses data structure in some coherent and consistent way would have worked. We just happened to be “blessed” with the timing of XML at the end of the distributed object era, which was the beginning of the container and wiring era (e.g., Servlets, Spring, SCA, etc.). XML just naturally happened along at the right time–1999-2000. Do you recall the era of vendor-defined text configuration files? That’s a much worse UGH! I’ll take Spring.NET IOC XML configuration any day in preference to that. –Bryan

I’m a Java guy, so I’ve never used Spring.NET but I’m sure your UGH assessment is appropriate.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:13:23 +0000

Ever worked with the Spring.NET IOC XML configuration on a sizable app? UUUUGGGGHHH!!!!

By: engtech

engtech — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:04:24 +0000

yaml to the rescue.

By: links for 2008-05-13 | Lazycoder

links for 2008-05-13 | Lazycoder — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:34:03 +0000

[...] Why XML is Bad for Humans | MyArch (tags: xml lazycoder) [...]

By: James Justin Harrell

James Justin Harrell — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:51:17 +0000

Why do you think XML should be more like programming languages? I don’t see how that would be an improvement. And when considering how you talk about assignment, I’m lead to think a big part of your problem with XML is that you are expecting it to be something that very few other people are expecting it to be.

By: Freud Pickle

Freud Pickle — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:08:35 +0000

Bah. My pseudo-XML got ate.

By: Freud Pickle

Freud Pickle — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:08:16 +0000

Treating XML structure as assignment seems to me a little broken. An XML file is a tree of tagged data, not a sequence of imperative assignments. If I write:

Joe Bloggs
3.14

Mary Hogg
3.75

That really isn’t equivalent to a sequence of four assignments or even two assignments. It’s one single data structure with two records, each having two subordinate records or data members.

By: Stefan Bischof

Stefan Bischof — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:25:23 +0000

Another more readable file format would be YAML.

By: Chris Noe

Chris Noe — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:40:04 +0000

Hi Sasha,

I enjoy reading your rambling. Keep up the good work. (What do you mean by “DSL”?)

- chris