3 ms·

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 pr

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.