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> I'll open it in my regular editor, which will provide at most syntax highlight, and edit it as needed with a bit of swearing. That sounds like a very passive
by sedachv 7y ago
> I'll open it in my regular editor, which will provide at most syntax highlight, and edit it as needed with a bit of swearing.
That sounds like a very passive-aggressive way to deal with a problem. Do you do the same thing when writing programs?
- theamk 7y agoWhich "same thing"? Not setting up editor and complex environment for the things I am only going to edit once or twice? Yes. In general, when you see something inefficient, you can either fix it to make it better, or ignore and come up with random workarounds. In my opinion, a config file which cannot be edited by hand, and which needs a special editor with non-trivial learning curve, is a inefficiency. I can either ignore it, and set up the specialized tools; or I can fix it, by ripping out XML and replacing it with something more human-editable, like TOML or YAML. In large teams, it is almost always better to fix it -- sure, I will spend a few hours getting rid of XML, but this will pay itself off in the long term, as no one else will have to bother with special setup anymore. (This obvious only applies to the systems where XML is a minor part, like a single configuration file. If your system has huge amount of XML, you better learn the right tools)
- sedachv 7y agoI don't understand, what is there to set up? With the Emacs mode I gave as an example, you just open an XML file and everything is there. Any decent text editor will have XML support.