Re: XML: The good, the bad, and the ugly

"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message news:pISdnR3bap8xIO7cRVn-pw_at_comcast.com...
>
> "Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message
> news:rVIcd.267691$D%.111425_at_attbi_s51...
>
> > > It's a recreation of Lisp s-expressions produced by people that got
> > > there by hacking on SGML who, as likely as not, didn't know they'd get
> > > s-exprs, and wound up with something less good...
> >
> > Exactly.
>
> I went scurrying off to the web to refresh my memory about Lisp
> s-expressions, and I ran across a paper comparing XML and s-expressions.
> I'm going to paste one paragraph in here:
>
> <quote>
> Nor is it an accident of history that Lisp programmers never came up with
> these technologies for Lisp data. The central idea of the XML family of
> standards is to separate code from data. The central idea of Lisp is that
> code and data are the same and should be represented the same. The Lisp
> community's idea of "Schema" would likely be "Lisp program". The Lisp
> community's idea of "addressing language" would likely be "Lisp program."
> The Lisp community's idea of "query language" would likely be "Lisp
> program." Unfortunately this response ignores the Principle of Least Power.
> </quote>

Actually, I think the LISPers, (for all their bad manners :-) have gotten a whole lot of things really right, and they did it decades ahead of anyone else realizing there was an issue.

But, as far as data management goes, they don't do so well; "Lisp program" as schema doesn't work as well as declarative schema-- Lisp is untyped. (But not as severely as XML.) Same issue with query language; it's better to write a declarative, content-addressing query than a procedure.

> I haven't finished understanding the paper well enough to comment on it,
> but this paragraph illustrates my current pet peeve, the "everything is
> a..." model of reality. The idea that Lisp and XML are expanding on
> opposite central ideas appeals to me.

Hmmm.

> The idea that one of them should be declared "bunk" and the other should
> prevail is, in my mind, worse than bunk.

What if one of them *is* bunk, though? Or, not exactly bunk, but deeply, deeply flawed? A good idea at the core, surrounded by a whole host of bad implementation.

> It reminds me of the guy who tried to persuade me that Eastern philosophy is
> better than Western philosophy. I let him go on for a while. Then I said,
> "when you compare the two philosophies by determining which one is better,
> you are only showing me how Western your mind still is!"

Beauty!

Marshall Received on Mon Oct 18 2004 - 17:21:36 CEST