XML is not a programming language. It's a platform for flexible AST development. It's meant to be tools-driven. Perhaps the tool support on the authoring side has not been realized as well as it should have in terms of XML build and config files. But certainly we get to enjoy pretty good tool support at runtime (validation, debugging). XML is easy to program for, which also means that if you're missing a specific XML tool feature, 9 times out of 10, it's within an average developer's grasp to bridge that gap themselves.
If you don't like the way Ant or Maven files are written, that's generally a shortcoming of the actual programming language that's been created using XML underpinnings, rather than XML itself. On Mar 8, 3:19 am, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > > Okay, XML is painful to read and not Turing complete, which is a bit > > annoying. > > Some usage of XML just seems to model an AST and as such, are indeed > Turing complete. The Ujac reporting/templating library comes to > mind:http://ujac.sourceforge.net/UJAC/docs/api/org/ujac/util/template/pack... > > > But the tools are really top notch and completely pervasive, even if you're > > not using an IDE. I'm not even talking about catching trivial problems like > > forgetting to close a bracket but immediately catching bad enum values > > thanks to a DTD or an XSD. > > Hmm from experience with JSF/XML, it's all too easy to adhere to > syntax (XSD schema) yet put gibberish together - which you will only > learn at runtime as the XML is expanded to instances of native strong > types. > > > I was editing a plugin.xml file earlier today, and as soon as I made a > > mistake or a typo, my editor and outline views light up with squiggly red > > lines. > > Have you done Spring XML configuration? That has gone so far that it's > practically impossible to get right unless you are lucky enough to > have the assistance of a tool, hell they even maintain a fork of > Eclipse called SpringSource, for the purpose. > > I think it was James Gosling who once said "Every configuration file > ends up becoming a programming language" and I think we can all agree > that XML, Turing complete or not, is a crappy programming language. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
