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> XML is awful I never really understood this. This seems to be an oft repeated truism from mid 2000s with little backing it up. The only awesome thing that J

by arc33 7y ago

> XML is awful I never really understood this. This seems to be an oft repeated truism from mid 2000s with little backing it up. The only awesome thing that JSON did, was lose type information as well. In fact, the only thing that I can see that JSON brought to the table was easier editing by those who didn't have IDEs, at the expense of losing type information.

willtim 7y ago
XML and especially XML schema are hugely complex and almost laughably difficult to bind to any mainstream programming language. It took Java over a decade to produce a binding that could (perhaps) handle an arbitrary schema. Types boil down to sums and products, I'm not convinced the designers of XML/XSD understood this. XML has so many overlapping concepts: elements, attributes, enumerations, choices, unions, sequences, lists, element/attribute groups, substitution groups, facets, simple types, complex types etc etc IMHO it's ad-hoc and ugly; we deserve better.
- arc33 7y ago
  > XML and especially XML schema are hugely complex and almost laughably difficult to bind I'm not very well versed in XML schema but if it were needlessly complex, it's probably not a good idea to throw baby out with the bathwater? XML seems more type safe, easier to fold larger XML documents than JSON or YAML and it seems safer to edit. Looks like, we're now reinventing all the XML advantages with a new config language, one at a time. First, JSON came because it looks simple at first sight, but looks hard as soon as the JSON is huge, no different or better than XML, in fact, probably worse. Then YAML appeared because, now it even allows you to add comments to config files, but it's a nightmare to edit, one wrong indentation and the YAML will blow up at runtime. And looks like, we're now coming up with other languages to add in the missing functionality that XML already provided.
mikl 7y ago
My main complaint with XML is that it’s far too complex for most use cases (like config files), and thus requires an unhealthy amount of tooling to work with. I can’t just load the file and run it through a parser and get an easily accessible object structure back, I’ll need to navigate the document with DOM or XPath. JSON with comments (aka JSONC) is in my opinion the best format in wide use today. It has structure and types, but not too many, and not a lot of magic, like YAML has, but for the most complex cases, JSON(C) falls short with its lack of extensibility and inheritance.
- arc33 7y ago
  > I can’t just load the file and run it through a parser and get an easily accessible object structure back Huh, I'm surprised by this. Normally, I just read an XML file and get a POJO out of it and this is probably why I find XML to be so natural and easy.

by arc33 7y ago

willtim 7y ago

XML and especially XML schema are hugely complex and almost laughably difficult to bind to any mainstream programming language. It took Java over a decade to produce a binding that could (perhaps) handle an arbitrary schema. Types boil down to sums and products, I'm not convinced the designers of XML/XSD understood this. XML has so many overlapping concepts: elements, attributes, enumerations, choices, unions, sequences, lists, element/attribute groups, substitution groups, facets, simple types, complex types etc etc IMHO it's ad-hoc and ugly; we deserve better.

arc33 7y ago
> XML and especially XML schema are hugely complex and almost laughably difficult to bind I'm not very well versed in XML schema but if it were needlessly complex, it's probably not a good idea to throw baby out with the bathwater? XML seems more type safe, easier to fold larger XML documents than JSON or YAML and it seems safer to edit. Looks like, we're now reinventing all the XML advantages with a new config language, one at a time. First, JSON came because it looks simple at first sight, but looks hard as soon as the JSON is huge, no different or better than XML, in fact, probably worse. Then YAML appeared because, now it even allows you to add comments to config files, but it's a nightmare to edit, one wrong indentation and the YAML will blow up at runtime. And looks like, we're now coming up with other languages to add in the missing functionality that XML already provided.

mikl 7y ago

My main complaint with XML is that it’s far too complex for most use cases (like config files), and thus requires an unhealthy amount of tooling to work with. I can’t just load the file and run it through a parser and get an easily accessible object structure back, I’ll need to navigate the document with DOM or XPath. JSON with comments (aka JSONC) is in my opinion the best format in wide use today. It has structure and types, but not too many, and not a lot of magic, like YAML has, but for the most complex cases, JSON(C) falls short with its lack of extensibility and inheritance.

arc33 7y ago
> I can’t just load the file and run it through a parser and get an easily accessible object structure back Huh, I'm surprised by this. Normally, I just read an XML file and get a POJO out of it and this is probably why I find XML to be so natural and easy.