John D. Mitchell's Blog

Why Humans Should NOT Have to Grok XML

Terence Parr, creator of ANTLR, wrote an excellent essay on why humans should not have to grok XML.

Comments

• Re: Are XML fanatics inhuman?
  They appear that way...

  And why Humans would ever want to program in XML?

  Very puzzling...

  Posted by: zoe_info on November 18, 2003 at 04:55 PM

• When to use XML
  i very much enjoyed the article by Terrance Parr...i really wanted to know why would someone prefer using XML instead of a delimited file..Parr's article helped in giving some insight into the problem...
  (for a specfic example consider EDI files (these are nothing but data files delimited by some delimiter character used for transmitting business related data)..these are now being increasingly replaced by XML standards such as cXML, essentially to carry the same data..this doesn't make any sense..as the markup unnecessarily adds to the cost...
  

  Posted by: hiten on November 18, 2003 at 09:00 PM

• I can tell you exactly why one wants to replace EDI with XML. One reason is that the EDI scene is run by pirates. Another reason is maintainability. An XML format is extensible, both this way and that, at least if you avoid using schemas. Classical EDI formats do not go well with extensions and modifications.

  Posted by: tobega on November 17, 2005 at 02:10 PM

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