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Languages are mainly for humans, not for machines. XML is intended for transporting data machine to machine, not to be read and comprehended by humans. Computer

by chopin 16y ago

Languages are mainly for humans, not for machines. XML is intended for transporting data machine to machine, not to be read and comprehended by humans. Computer languages must foster the comnprehension by (fellow) developers, this is their main task. Reloading is possible with Java as well. And even an XML-document has to be reparsed and most likely be brought into an internal representation, a task which is very similar to a compilation. So, no difference here or any jsutification that xml is suited better for this purpose than other languages.

masklinn 16y ago
> Languages are mainly for humans, not for machines. XML is intended for transporting data machine to machine, not to be read and comprehended by humans. You might want to avoid rewriting history, or at least avoid commenting on things you clearly know nothing about. XML Working Group design goal 6 (out of 10): > XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. Human readability was a primary goal of the WG, and one of the big advocacy claims against binary or custom plaintext formats. > Reloading is possible with Java as well. Sure, anything's possible, you can even parse, compile and load C source code in a Java program if you have time to waste. How many JVM implementations let you trivially reload executed source files on the fly, and how often does that feature explode in your face? > And even an XML-document has to be reparsed and most likely be brought into an internal representation, a task which is very similar to a compilation. The point is that it's performed on the fly, easily, and can be re-executed as often as needed without bringing down the whole machine.
- chopin 16y ago
  > XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. Yes, that's true, as stated in http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#sec-origin-goals http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#sec-origin-goals. Nevertheless, I stand by my point that human readability does not necessarily imply easy human comprehension. For that matter I believe that the working group introduces that design goal to ease problem tracking and not to imply that xml is suitable for human to human communication (which imho should be the main design goal of computer languages). I have great respect for your mental abilities but for me its difficult to understand larger ant scripts as xml is a data container and not a control flow language.

by chopin 16y ago

masklinn 16y ago

> Languages are mainly for humans, not for machines. XML is intended for transporting data machine to machine, not to be read and comprehended by humans. You might want to avoid rewriting history, or at least avoid commenting on things you clearly know nothing about. XML Working Group design goal 6 (out of 10): > XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. Human readability was a primary goal of the WG, and one of the big advocacy claims against binary or custom plaintext formats. > Reloading is possible with Java as well. Sure, anything's possible, you can even parse, compile and load C source code in a Java program if you have time to waste. How many JVM implementations let you trivially reload executed source files on the fly, and how often does that feature explode in your face? > And even an XML-document has to be reparsed and most likely be brought into an internal representation, a task which is very similar to a compilation. The point is that it's performed on the fly, easily, and can be re-executed as often as needed without bringing down the whole machine.

chopin 16y ago
> XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. Yes, that's true, as stated in http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#sec-origin-goals http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#sec-origin-goals. Nevertheless, I stand by my point that human readability does not necessarily imply easy human comprehension. For that matter I believe that the working group introduces that design goal to ease problem tracking and not to imply that xml is suitable for human to human communication (which imho should be the main design goal of computer languages). I have great respect for your mental abilities but for me its difficult to understand larger ant scripts as xml is a data container and not a control flow language.