4 ms·
Why? Because of the barely competent programmer, like myself. A DIY army. Is XML better than JSON? For longterm stability sure. A quick config file? Nope. You
by davidktr 4y ago
Why? Because of the barely competent programmer, like myself. A DIY army.
Is XML better than JSON? For longterm stability sure. A quick config file? Nope. You see, to understand XML you kind of have to know how to work with trees. Bread-and-butter for compsci grads, a nuisance for all others.
Recently I needed to query a SOAP-based API. It took me 3 days because I had no idea how a namespace in XML worked, because I was not sure which lib in Python to use (lxml was the solution), and because their API had some quirks. I read forum posts from the late 00's, the documentation is really scarce.
I would love to learn the fundamentals, I don't like half-assing things. But a) I'm not going back to uni for it, b) I'm not bright enough to be excellent in two fields. Learning the fundamentals takes a very, very long time. Where to start even? A complete math program? Programming fundamentals as such? Theoretical compsci?
At the end of the day, things need to work. If they fall apart next year I can tell my boss "ooohhh big problem give money". Using XML instead of JSON has no payoff today.
- StreamBright 4y agoThis is exactly what OP is talking about. You have XML instead of ASN.1 Imagine if we had only one way of doing data transfer between computer systems.
- pjc50 4y ago> Imagine if we had only one way of doing data transfer between computer systems. Well, that would be deeply inadequate and people would have to invent more of them?
- StreamBright 4y agoI am curious what use cases triggered the development of XML for example.
- pjc50 4y agoThis roughly covers it: https://ccollins.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/a-brief-history-of-xml/ https://ccollins.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/a-brief-history-of... - I hadn't realised SGML was quite so old, though.
- StreamBright 4y ago> At it’s core, XML allows a software engineer the ability to create a vocabulary, and use this vocabulary to describe data. The lols. This is so good to read that XML allows that.
- jaredsohn 4y ago> Is XML better than JSON? For longterm stability sure. Don't get that. >to understand XML you kind of have to know how to work with trees. JSON is trees, too.
- ted_bunny 4y agoAm I the only one seeing the forests here?
- Sankozi 4y ago> Is XML better than JSON? For longterm stability sure. A quick config file? Nope. I have an opposite opinion. JSON is great solution for a protocol or serialization format, better than XML (JSON is faster, smaller, safer, easier to understand) But it is one of the worst possible choices for config file format. Even XML is better in that case. Lack of comments is complete showstopper in any source code file syntax.