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

Martha Stewart called it a Good Thing when "Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote:
> 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.

Hum? Lisp is eminently strongly typed, whether we're talking about the exceedingly sophisticated type tree of Common Lisp, or the sparser arrangements in Scheme.

There are only a few languages I can think of that are particularly nearly untyped:

1. Tcl only had strings, for a long time;
2. REXX only had strings;
3. Perl's objects' types try pretty hard to be schizophrenic...
4. BCPL objects have types, but those types vary based on what operator you're using on them at the moment... -- (reverse (concatenate 'string "ofni.secnanifxunil" "_at_" "enworbbc")) http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/sgml.html Editing is a rewording activity. -- Alan Perlis [And EMACS a rewording editor. Ed.]