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

From: Marshall Spight <mspight_at_dnai.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 05:28:49 GMT
Message-ID: <kC1dd.266502$MQ5.256565@attbi_s52>

"Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne_at_acm.org> wrote in message news:2tj2geF1vkc12U1_at_uni-berlin.de...
> 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.

But nothing is checked until runtime, so there are no type-based guarantees you can make about a well-formed LISP program. This isn't a good idea for data management, although there is a small but vocal minority that appears to think it's a good idea for writing programs. (I happen to think it's not a good idea for writing programs, either.)

Marshall Received on Tue Oct 19 2004 - 00:28:49 CDT