From: Austin Ziegler <austin@...>
Date: 2002-12-16T21:42:05+09:00
Subject: Re: help -- persuade my boss to adopt ruby

On Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:46:25 +0900, W. Kent Starr wrote:
> XML may be a key enabling technology here. Another quote for your
> collection, this one from Steve Litt (March 2001, Troubleshooting
> Professional Magazine, Troubleshooters.com): "XML derives its
> power from the fact that it can represent anything the human mind
> can conceive."
> 
> To the degree this observation is accurate, the potential is
> mind-boggling. IMO opinion, within the specific domain of
> programming, Ruby exhibits to a large degree these same
> characteristics.

I have to disagree with this quote about XML. First, I don't think
that XML can represent anything the human mind can conceive -- it
imposes a particular way of thinking when attempting to represent
things which may not be conducive to representation of particular
concepts. (XML is a hierarchical data format; not everything can be
represented hierarchically.) XML also requires a lot of meta-data
and alternate "languages" to indicate the links between data, which
makes it very difficult to express the same information in multiple
ways.

The problem with a hierarchical data format is that it pretty much
requires that your data be able to be represented as a hierarchy,
and that enforces a single data query path (a la LDAP); you can't
query efficiently in the opposite direction, or from the middle.

-austin
-- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2002.12.16 at 07.37.02