3 ms·

Agreed re composition -- the sign that the language had finally 'clicked' was when you started seeing lots of little xsl:templates instead of one gigantic mass

Agreed re composition -- the sign that the language had finally 'clicked' was when you started seeing lots of little xsl:templates instead of one gigantic mass of if statements. I don't really agree that cruft or configuration difficulties were the problem, though. Verbose, sure, fine, but otherwise spare to a fault. I suspect it's more that it demanded understanding of fairly sophisticated coding concepts to be at all useful, but was too often perceived as "front end" tech, or as just another markup language -- so ended up being dropped in the laps of too many designers-with-a-few-javascript-recipes-under-their-belts who simply weren't equipped to cope with it. I spent a while running XSLT training sessions for a corporate client; 95% of my trainees would just reel away in disgust and confusion the instant they learned they wouldn't be able to, say, increment a variable. (The remaining handful would be all OMG THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR MY WHOLE LIFE. It got to be a little game of mine to try to predict ahead of time who would be which.) Maybe it was just ahead of its time; the average front-end web developer is a lot more sophisticated these days than we were back then. (yes yes get off my lawn I have clouds to shout at)

FeloniousHam 12y ago
Count me among those reeling in disgust: XML is unpleasant to work with, XSLT just adds layers of complexity on top of that. I wrote transforms for the few cases where I needed straight XML-to-XML conversions, but anything of complexity I retreated to a "real" language. It's obviously a personal choice, but I find working in XSL/XML like running through mud. The success of JSON is due in part to the low signal-to-noise inherent in XML, and maybe XSL's low popularity is likely due to the necessary complexity of dealing with unnecessarily noisy data. I sometimes daydream about a present where YAML got there first.

FeloniousHam 12y ago

Count me among those reeling in disgust: XML is unpleasant to work with, XSLT just adds layers of complexity on top of that. I wrote transforms for the few cases where I needed straight XML-to-XML conversions, but anything of complexity I retreated to a "real" language. It's obviously a personal choice, but I find working in XSL/XML like running through mud. The success of JSON is due in part to the low signal-to-noise inherent in XML, and maybe XSL's low popularity is likely due to the necessary complexity of dealing with unnecessarily noisy data. I sometimes daydream about a present where YAML got there first.