Hi
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
[mailto:owner-xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Revusky
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 6:59 PM
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [xsl] Re: XSLT model not "natural"? [was Re:
[ANN] FreeMarker 2.3 as an alternative to XSLT]
Américo Albuquerque wrote:
Hi
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
[mailto:owner-xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com] On Behalf
Of
Dimitre Novatchev
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 7:30 AM
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: [xsl] Re: XSLT model not "natural"? [was Re: [ANN]
FreeMarker 2.3 as an alternative to XSLT]
Maybe it is very hard for babies to start walking.
Well, in case you are visiting from Mars, I think I should point out
that human infants start to walk and to talk at a certain age without
any particular teaching or training effort whatsoever.
First of all, wasn't me who said that, so it would be polite if you had
replied to the original thread.
It isn't entirely true that human infants start walking and talking without
training, they have training, it is a different kind of training that
doesn't require a teacher, it is made manly by there parents.
Meanwhile, various academic studies attest to the fact that neither
human infants nor adults start spontaneously writing XSLT
stylesheets at
any age.
As with any other programing language
I think the above surprising facts go a long way towards
explaining why
Mulberrytech, for example, is able to have a viable business training
people to use XSLT, and does not offer equivalent training in
teaching
toddlers how to walk.
Shall we "protect" them from this difficulty and ensure they
were easily crawling around all their life?
Make a special tool/product to ensure this?
<sigh>
This analogy with toddlers learning to walk is surely one of
the worst
metaphors I've heard in a long time. Not only do toddlers
learn to walk
spontaneously with no adult intervention, but also, they necessarily
As said before not completely true, they had to have some adult intervention
otherwise they simply would walk at all. This intervention is, of course,
spontaneous. The parents give the example. They "teach" there children how
to walk and how to talk by doing that in front of them, children learn manly
by imitation.
*must* learn to walk. There is no equivalent need for
everybody to learn
XSLT. For all of it, it's just one more IT tool among many.
If another tool can be used for the same purposes and good
results can
also be achieved, but with far less training effort, say,
that may well
be an advantage that one should consider. Again, this is a
question that
would have to be resolved empirically.
I agree with you. It has been said many times that in some situations xslt
wasn't the wright tool for the job.
I posted the announcement here because I am interested in getting
feedback about FreeMarker's new declarative XML processing
functionality. I am not terribly interested in hearing
dubious analogies
like this, that, besides being obviously absurd, do not contain any
useful content.
Well, maybe I'm being a bit oversensitive, but it seems to me
that the
subtext of this ridiculous analogy was that it was meant as a
put-down.
I think, in any case, that people should think more about
what they're
saying before saying it -- like, whether what they're saying
makes any
sense or has any constructive content whatsoever.... that
kind of thing...
I wasn't trying to make any king of analogies but simply stating that many
of what we are is based on what we learn, even talking.
Américo Albuquerque
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list