Egregoros

@coolbean @phnt @vic the problem with XML is that it makes sense within the SGML lineage which is not how most people experienced it.

SGML was this massive gigaspec where the culture developed a self awareness that you kind of cherry pick which parts fit your budget. it had a lot of human aids to make ex. writing recipes easier. but because it was a gigaspec, and not everyone implements all of it, they decided what if we removed a lot of the customization and just made a dialect with a lot of fixed decisions that people could implement as an exchange format.

that format is XML.

the correct use of XML per greybeards is in the middle of conversion tools. like i posted last year, its like this:

- my cool key checking daemon only supports a single hardened XML parser for configs
- some domain specific language gets used to actually configure it or a GUI
- a translator turns the cool human version in to the XML document, after processing out all of the aids in to a single verbose document that is plainly (if tediously) understood

Sun didn't follow instructions and everyone else met XML through Sun. Thus begins the generational trauma to reinvent XML-but-Worse (JSON) or XML-but-cute (KDL)

@phnt @feld @SuperDicq @sun where we failed as a field is programming has been stuck in the 1970s forever. we briefly reached out in the 90s with stuff like clickteam and hypercard and the RAD stacks but we've fully regressed back to the 1970s and this makes me very sad.

you're not supposed to be writing C code these days you're supposed to be opening up your object browser, slapping some widgets together and writing a few message sends. this is the future xerox left us. and we just.. walked away.

@sun @phnt @feld @SuperDicq lain saying it codes as good as them is an indictment of lain being a bad coder, at least until i see a coding model do an actually good job of something in person.

i've been seeing a lot of academic reports that the people who benefit most are simply bad at their jobs, and people who are very good use them very selectively or not at all. after dealing with both beads implementations being steaming piles of trash yesterday i'm not inspired but i might still be willing to drop 10$ on a GLM sub for a month as one final "hate only in knowledge."