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It's hard to imagine nowadays how much hype there was around XML. It was the buzzword of the day for a while. It felt as pervasive as "AI" or "blockchain" have

It's hard to imagine nowadays how much hype there was around XML. It was the buzzword of the day for a while. It felt as pervasive as "AI" or "blockchain" have been recently. There were many conferences on the subject, every acronym has an X for XML in there (c.f AJAX). All this for a markup language (ok, and a schema/query/transform language). It seems so weird now.

donatj 4y ago
Yes! XML was a major feature / selling point of so many industry tools and services. What does it do? No idea, but it uses XML to do it so take my money. So many businesses just screamed about XML. It was honestly kind of a bizarre furor in the early aughts.
- oblio 4y ago
  > Yes! Cryptocurrencies were a major feature / selling point of so many industry tools and services. What does it do? No idea, but it uses cryptocurrencies to do it so take my money. So many businesses just screamed about cryptocurrencies. It was honestly kind of a bizarre furor in the early 2020s.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    > Yes! Rust was a major feature / selling point of so many industry tools and services. What does it do? No idea, but it uses Rust to do it so take my money. So many businesses just screamed about Rust. It was honestly kind of a bizarre furor in the early 2020s.
- sk5t 4y ago
  Those times were all about XML and application servers like ATG Dynamo, Coldfusion, BEA, JBoss, and WebSphere, with very delicate installation procedures that probably also involved XML.
epberry 4y ago
That is crazy to think about. I wonder what this sentence will be about in another 25 years.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  "AI", of course.
api 4y ago
The underlying idea was that this self describing format would enable easy interoperability. It wasn’t 100% wrong since before standards like this you had a million ugly bespoke formats and fragile CSV formats. In the end it was JSON plus API description and generation tooling that delivered, though XML lives on under the hood in lots of places. It’s usually used for cases closer to markup like word processor documents or for very complex configuration files. Hype is just something you have to get used to in this industry. It’s really bad. Any new thing usually gives birth to a wave of breathless unhinged hype whose main purpose is to get corporate purchasers and VCs to cough up money.
- oblio 4y ago
  I'd argue that (JSON plus API description and generation tooling) didn't really deliver everything. XML has schemas and validation as part of the main standard. JSON still doesn't have that. There are some things tacked on that 90% of people don't use. XML has comments, JSON doesn't (!). JSON is okish and it's easy to pick up. As Visual Basic, Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Python, Golang have proved, convenience at the start beats almost everything else.
- butlerm 4y ago
  I am not under the impression that JSON has replaced XML as a data interchange format for general usage at all. It is useful for APIs, problematic for configuration files, and relatively uncommon as a file format. I don't think there is any risk of SVG being supplanted by a JSON equivalent for example, nor most business data interchange formats either.
arp242 4y ago
I remember people saying stuff like "if you're not using XML everywhere then you haven't understood XML".
- wwarner 4y ago
  As you work through your XML implementation, you'll have many questions, and the answer to every one of them is more XML.

donatj 4y ago

Yes! XML was a major feature / selling point of so many industry tools and services. What does it do? No idea, but it uses XML to do it so take my money. So many businesses just screamed about XML. It was honestly kind of a bizarre furor in the early aughts.

oblio 4y ago
> Yes! Cryptocurrencies were a major feature / selling point of so many industry tools and services. What does it do? No idea, but it uses cryptocurrencies to do it so take my money. So many businesses just screamed about cryptocurrencies. It was honestly kind of a bizarre furor in the early 2020s.
- seanw444 4y ago
  > Yes! Rust was a major feature / selling point of so many industry tools and services. What does it do? No idea, but it uses Rust to do it so take my money. So many businesses just screamed about Rust. It was honestly kind of a bizarre furor in the early 2020s.
sk5t 4y ago
Those times were all about XML and application servers like ATG Dynamo, Coldfusion, BEA, JBoss, and WebSphere, with very delicate installation procedures that probably also involved XML.

epberry 4y ago

That is crazy to think about. I wonder what this sentence will be about in another 25 years.

otabdeveloper4 4y ago
"AI", of course.

api 4y ago

The underlying idea was that this self describing format would enable easy interoperability. It wasn’t 100% wrong since before standards like this you had a million ugly bespoke formats and fragile CSV formats. In the end it was JSON plus API description and generation tooling that delivered, though XML lives on under the hood in lots of places. It’s usually used for cases closer to markup like word processor documents or for very complex configuration files. Hype is just something you have to get used to in this industry. It’s really bad. Any new thing usually gives birth to a wave of breathless unhinged hype whose main purpose is to get corporate purchasers and VCs to cough up money.

oblio 4y ago
I'd argue that (JSON plus API description and generation tooling) didn't really deliver everything. XML has schemas and validation as part of the main standard. JSON still doesn't have that. There are some things tacked on that 90% of people don't use. XML has comments, JSON doesn't (!). JSON is okish and it's easy to pick up. As Visual Basic, Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Python, Golang have proved, convenience at the start beats almost everything else.
butlerm 4y ago
I am not under the impression that JSON has replaced XML as a data interchange format for general usage at all. It is useful for APIs, problematic for configuration files, and relatively uncommon as a file format. I don't think there is any risk of SVG being supplanted by a JSON equivalent for example, nor most business data interchange formats either.

arp242 4y ago

I remember people saying stuff like "if you're not using XML everywhere then you haven't understood XML".

wwarner 4y ago
As you work through your XML implementation, you'll have many questions, and the answer to every one of them is more XML.