On Mon, 2004-05-17 at 17:04, Steve Harris wrote: > On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 02:55:16 -0400, Dave Robillard wrote: > > > ISTR someone at LADconf 2 also proposed to use LISP for configuration > > > and I kind of liked the idea. > > > > How about scheme? > > > > Hey, it's the official scripting language of the GNU system.. :) > > We don't have a scripting language problem, we have a metadata problem. > Square peg, round hole. > > - Steve
This is where, if I was actually a LISP-ish language advocate, would go on some silly rant about code being data or somesuch. Buuuut I was joking really. XML was designed specifically for this sort of thing, scheme was not. As nice and elegant as scheme is, more people are more comfortable with XML-ey things than LISP-ey things (mostly due to HTML.. every idiot has done some HTML, but functional programming languages are more in the domain of us academic weenies and thus more exclusive). I think easing the burden on (potential) developers is pretty high up on the priority list. Plus, we just don't need the power of scheme; and as people have already mentioned, libxml2 is used damn near everywhere anyway, so might as well use it. (Guile is, unfortunately, not even remotely as commonly used..) So, ++xml, because reinventing the wheel is stupid. While I understand the kneejerk anti-xml reaction (damn buzzwords) it just seems like the right tool for the job... -Dave Robillard
