What is XML for?

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Simon St.Laurent
| 
| You can dismiss it as hype if you like, but I'd prefer to call it
| enthusiasm. 

I guess it starts out as enthusiasm and still is with most people on
this list, but a lot of people get all excited about it without really
knowing what it's really good for. This, IMHO, is when the hype sets
in and we get effects like the ones Paul described.

| Java has hype as well.  And I use Java all the time to do some very
| interesting things, many of which have to do with XML.  Hype on top of
| hype?  Works great for me.

Sure, but like Paul points out all this hype/enthusiasm makes users
forget about a lot of other useful things. It seems that there's only
room for one technology in the limelight at once, which is a pity.

Sure, Java is much better than C++ for most projects, but what about
Eiffel, Ada95 and Common Lisp? These three are in many respects far
better than Java. What they're lacking is mainly hype (and in the case
of Common Lisp: good implementations).
 
| If the older ways work better, people will use them.

This is the real problem: they won't, they'll be too busy running
after the next silver bullet.

I think if I could have one wish about the computer industry fulfilled
it would be that we would suddenly have knowledgeable users.

--Lars M.


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