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

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:WR1dd.418094$Fg5.11784_at_attbi_s53...

> Agreed! The way LISP people respond in newsgroups has
> been an enormous turn-off for me, and has probably led
> me to pay less attention to the language than it deserves.

Well, I probably paid less attention to Java than it deserves!

> > Some variants of Lisp were typed.
>
> Really? Like, statically typed? Types were checked at compile time?

I'm not sure just what you mean by "compile time". If you mean the conversion of the character based expression of the same language into the internal tree representation of the same expressions, that's not generally referred to as "compile time".
The LISP people generally called that function the "loader". I'm not sure what the formal name was.

The loader had to understand types. Literal values in the source code had to be converted to objects of the correct type. As far as "atoms" goes, the only Lisp variant I knew well enough to comment on, didn't do it the way any compiled language would have. The type of an atom was "atom". The type of the contents of the atom went with the contents, not with the atom.

Thus an atom could hold a floating point number at one point in time, a "relation" at another point in time, and a LISP program at another point in time. A process had to be pretty flexible if it was going to cope with values of different types.
They didn't use the term "polymorphic" back in those days, but it certainly would have been a useful concept.

Did it do type checking at run time? You bet!

> I'm not sure if XML makes the grade. It's designed for storing data.

I disagree, but I could be wrong.

I guess I'm going to have to read up on what the designers intended. Never mind the devotees.
The devotees usually misconstrue the designers' intent.

> (Not really for transferring data, as we often say; it's just an inert
> file format, with nothing transfer-related in its nature.)

Duhhh.... maybe I'm just slow on the uptake here, but what are file formats for, if not data transfer???

If the only program that ever reads the file is the same one that wrote it, then yeah, sure, it's just storage.
But as soon as one program writes it and a different program reads it, then data transfer is going on, isn't it???

> XML does actually have one awesome idea in it, which is
> the idea of the Universal File Format. This one great idea
> is responsible for 100% of the success of XML, and nothing
> I say about XML should be construed as saying that that's
> not Just A Damn Good Idea. But a good idea by itself
> is not enough; execution matters.

The universal file format is about data communication. It's a damned good idea. Literally!
If you look back in Genesis 11, you'll see that the lack of of a universal language was what condemned the execution of what probably was a pretty good architectural plan.

> Heh heh! Yeah, it bites 'em every time. Only trouble is, they
> don't know what bit 'em!

The folks back in Genesis 11 never knew what bit them, either! Received on Tue Oct 19 2004 - 13:26:23 CEST