On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Graydon <graydon(_at_)marost(_dot_)ca> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 06:24:06PM +0100, David Rudel scripsit:
On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 2:15 AM, Liam R E Quin <liam(_at_)w3(_dot_)org>
wrote:
Ideas welcome.
Would it make sense to start with considering what prevents people
from using XSLT for projects that yearn for it? I have a very limited
view on what this is, but from what I can tell, there are basically 3
things:
[snip David Rudel's experiences for brevity, I'm by no means disagreeing
with them!]
What prevents people from using Lisp?
another community which routinely experiences doomed calls for syntax
prettification
XML doesn't work like anything else; XML is graph theory, XSLT is an
imperative tree-transformation language specifically for XML, and
nothing else works that way. People with solid coding skills from other
domains try to use XSLT and wind up in the special hell that is trying
to make XSLT do anything imperative. It builds up a reservoir of
loathing.
and thats why I wouldn't bother reaching out to them.
Since the analysts and the project-managers don't like it either -- XML
data is mostly illegible to them (doesn't go into Excel, you can't query
it[1], etc.) -- this makes advocating for XSLT difficult.
and thats why I wouldn't bother talking to them.
Why should we
go with rare (and more expensive) skills when we can find a way to do
this with SQL?
That one I can answer. There are companies who strategy is to develop
in things like Haskell as guarantees getting some unbelievably smart
applicants.
X-Fu people are are smarter than your average bear, so you minimize
the risk of hiring a dufus which is far more costly. Also if your
project expands to encompass Semantic Web, how smart is the SQL hire
looking now.
Raise the spectre of the lossy round-trip from richer data formts to
SQL and back and ask why not avoid the problem altogether.
I've never got anybody to believe XSLT was easy; I have got people to
believe it was powerful, and I suspect the best way to evangelize for
XSLT is along that axis. "Here are things we can do reliably that are
much harder any other way".
sell that to problem owner and not the IT people who are geared up to
solve every problem only with tools they know how to use.
--~------------------------------------------------------------------
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
To unsubscribe, go to: http://lists.mulberrytech.com/xsl-list/
or e-mail: <mailto:xsl-list-unsubscribe(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
--~--