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Whenever two or more are gathered together, they shall argue about JSON vs XML. Personally I like the simplicity of JSON and also the expressive power of XML.

Whenever two or more are gathered together, they shall argue about JSON vs XML. Personally I like the simplicity of JSON and also the expressive power of XML. But then I tend to only use each for the task it was primarily intended: application data-on-the-wire in JSON and "documents" in XML. It seems like a lot of the recurrent discussion around these technologies happens when they're pushed to do things outside their comfort zone. And I wonder if some of this is down to siloing of developer knowledge. There was a comment on HN a few days ago (not by me, and I can't find it now) to the effect that web development has historically attracted self-taught developers or those who have come to it by routes like bootcamps. It went on to say that they perhaps consequently lack some knowledge of existing techniques and solutions, and therefore tend to recreate solutions that may already exist (and not always well). And this drives the well-known churn in webdev tech: of which bolting schemas onto JSON is arguably an example. I wonder what people think of this? Personally I think it has some merit, but that the "churn" has also generated (along with much wheel-reinvention) some great innovations. And I say that as someone who works mainly on back-end stuff. Thoughts?

vonwoodson 3y ago
I'd extend this "X developers are mostly self-taught" onto all of computer development. They say, "Every developer Of a Certain Age's first programming language was BASIC" and my experience of (eventually) getting a CS degree is that there is the expectation of students to already know how to do the thing that they are trying to teach; a certain level of "self taught" is expected. To that end, I can see how in The Age of Teh Internets that the standard of self taught has moved of from BASIC to HTML/CSS/JS (or Unity or whatever sparked the young mind's attention). --- What I'm not certain of is that "self taught" means that work will be duplicated because the self taught developer doesn't know the technology that exists. I think that someone who is extremely online will very likely be more abreast of what technologies exist. I think that a formal education is better at establishing what the fundamentals underlying a programing method or paradigm... but not necessarily at exposing new programmers to what the state-of-the-art is.

vonwoodson 3y ago

I'd extend this "X developers are mostly self-taught" onto all of computer development. They say, "Every developer Of a Certain Age's first programming language was BASIC" and my experience of (eventually) getting a CS degree is that there is the expectation of students to already know how to do the thing that they are trying to teach; a certain level of "self taught" is expected. To that end, I can see how in The Age of Teh Internets that the standard of self taught has moved of from BASIC to HTML/CSS/JS (or Unity or whatever sparked the young mind's attention). --- What I'm not certain of is that "self taught" means that work will be duplicated because the self taught developer doesn't know the technology that exists. I think that someone who is extremely online will very likely be more abreast of what technologies exist. I think that a formal education is better at establishing what the fundamentals underlying a programing method or paradigm... but not necessarily at exposing new programmers to what the state-of-the-art is.