Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

XML is the future

bitecode.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 408 posts

Re: XML is the future

#231

Post by joegibbs »

nologic01 wrote: post #74

Some thoughts of why software is so hype prone and will likely remain so, if not accelerate * Its intrinsically easy to come up with new approaches. Thinking and writing software is a mental process, it is not limited by physical constraints and messy manufacturing. * The scope of use contexts in society exploded. You only needed the formula-translation language when you had five whitecoats in a research lab punching…

Also: software (at least the kind of software that results from hype-driven development) is much less dangerous, and there's a lot less that can go wrong if it fails. If you're working on a new kind of process for making some food ingredient you can easily do it wrong and poison someone, so people are naturally more cautious about trying new things. It's the same with software for e.g. nuclear reactors or plane controls, which is why we don't see them being written with microservices and Typescript.

Re: XML is the future

#232

Post by PurpleRamen »

eduction wrote: post #52
preommr wrote: post #30

It's easy to just mark XML off as one of the many fads in tech given how many there are. But I think it's much more worthwile to dive into the particulars of why it failed. While they're all fads, some of them share commonalities that, in hindsight, I think we can say were major catylsts to their downfall. With XML, it failed because something like JSON was much simpler. Time and time again I see people saying that j…

>but I think it's much more worthwile to dive into the particulars of why it failed If you’re going to deep dive, define your terms: what did it fail at? At being the future? Kind of a straw man, even if some people did argue that. As a document interchange format? Between RSS — including podcasts! — Microsoft Office, and LibreOffice it seems to have done reasonably well. As a data interchange format? Undoubtedly JSO…

> what did it fail at?

To stay. Yes, it's still used. But which new projects are still using XML? Most usage now are remnants from the golden age. Others are old companies who build their culture with XML, and continue to use it, but that's it. XML is not growing anymore, and slowly dying. It's quite like RSS, not dead yet, but not prospering either.

Re: XML is the future

#233

Post by flir »

boffinAudio wrote: post #153
gnulinux wrote: post #7

I've been working in the tech industry in the US for about 5 years. Ever since I knew myself I've been coding. From middle school to high school, given any problem, like Sudoku, or keeping up daily chores, my solution was Programming! Programming wasy homebase. Then I studied it in uni, thought I was kinda good at it, and loved it. But when I started working in the industry, I realized that it's absolutely exhausting…

Use what works. Ship code. Support your customers. Help them improve their lives. All other considerations are secondary. Including whether or not your peers approve of your code. Always remember: the User is king. Programmers are nothing without users, no matter what technology they apply to the situation. Sounds like you've shipped, and shipped often. GOOD!

But there are so many layers of abstraction between me and my user... (human layers, not software layers)

Re: XML is the future

#234

Post by austin-cheney »

nologic01 wrote: post #74

Some thoughts of why software is so hype prone and will likely remain so, if not accelerate * Its intrinsically easy to come up with new approaches. Thinking and writing software is a mental process, it is not limited by physical constraints and messy manufacturing. * The scope of use contexts in society exploded. You only needed the formula-translation language when you had five whitecoats in a research lab punching…

Its all about consideration for the audience. Those most lured by hype tend to be those least qualified and concerned with doing the work to validate such hype. That means you have a ready audience of low hanging fruit ready to consume shiny new things if the selling point is easiness.

When improving things leaders, actual leaders who know how to lead, invest in process. Individual contributors looking for to improve things with easy invest in product hype. The difference is striking.

Re: XML is the future

#235

Post by boffinAudio »

flir wrote: post #233
boffinAudio wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use what works. Ship code. Support your customers. Help them improve their lives. All other considerations are secondary. Including whether or not your peers approve of your code. Always remember: the User is king. Programmers are nothing without users, no matter what technology they apply to the situation. Sounds like you've shipped, and shipped often. GOOD!

But there are so many layers of abstraction between me and my user... (human layers, not software layers)

All the more reason for you to keep the user in mind while you wade through the crud.

Re: XML is the future

#236

Post by shocks »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #214
shocks wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you forget about a PHP container for a few years it will /also/ have 40 new vulnerabilities. Actually, containers are worse because OS updates of core shared libraries do nothing. You have to rebuild every damn container. Setting up monitoring for your docker containers is also a whole thing. :) I think you’re taking my example a little too literally. My point is not that docker/k8s/whatever is bad; just that the…

I think what people are missing is that sure, code "rots", at the very least because of security patches. But since this all happens to everything simultaneously, the more distinct layers and support tools you have in your stack, the more often you have to deal with something breaking in a nontrivial way. In short: the more moving parts you have, the less time you have between major malfunctions. (Manufacturing and h…

Yea, it’s definitely about trading features for simplicity.

Re: XML is the future

#237

Post by Tade0 »

Akin's laws of spacecraft design apply to software engineering with only minimal adjustments:

https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html

For 39. replace "launch vehicle" with "technology".

In any case after over a decade of "web development" (as it was still called back when I started out) my position is that to an extent we need this sort of circus because it's the only way for businesses to invest into moving this field forward.

Take for example the titular XML: largely hot garbage in applications where we learned to use JSON now, pretty damn solid as a text representation of file formats, 5024 pages of OOXML's specification notwithstanding. The author points that out as well.

If you want less of that go work in a financial institution, where you'll find unironically rock-solid Java 8(or perhaps even 11 nowadays) and associated frameworks.

Re: XML is the future

#238

Post by alkonaut »

Doing any kind of development apart from web, is bliss.

It doesn’t even matter what other genre of software dev it is. Embedded, mobile apps, desktop, PLC, HPC, … just so long as you stay out of the whole front end/backend/cloud/browser nightmare, these cycles are much less noticeable.

Re: XML is the future

#239

Post by akkad33 »

joegibbs wrote: post #231
nologic01 wrote: post #74

Some thoughts of why software is so hype prone and will likely remain so, if not accelerate * Its intrinsically easy to come up with new approaches. Thinking and writing software is a mental process, it is not limited by physical constraints and messy manufacturing. * The scope of use contexts in society exploded. You only needed the formula-translation language when you had five whitecoats in a research lab punching…

Also: software (at least the kind of software that results from hype-driven development) is much less dangerous, and there's a lot less that can go wrong if it fails. If you're working on a new kind of process for making some food ingredient you can easily do it wrong and poison someone, so people are naturally more cautious about trying new things. It's the same with software for e.g. nuclear reactors or plane contr…

What programming languages are typically used in such high risk scenarios

Re: XML is the future

#240

Post by phpisthebest »

noduerme wrote: post #19
gnulinux wrote: post #7

I've been working in the tech industry in the US for about 5 years. Ever since I knew myself I've been coding. From middle school to high school, given any problem, like Sudoku, or keeping up daily chores, my solution was Programming! Programming wasy homebase. Then I studied it in uni, thought I was kinda good at it, and loved it. But when I started working in the industry, I realized that it's absolutely exhausting…

I've watched this happen to so many coders in the land where people write code for companies that sell code . Personal advice: Write code for any other kind of company. They're much more resistant to fads. They don't care how you accomplish the new feature. They just want to get it done. And they certainly don't want to change their stack, ever , although in a new project you'll have more flexibility to pick the righ…

>>in the land where people write code for companies that sell code.

That is not always true, it also depends on who they are selling code do..

I know a few Orgs that by code from others, and pay $$$$ to ensure it never changes... or rather only changes in measured approved ways not drastic changes that would up in business workflows.

So I would amend your statement to where people write code for companies that sell code to startups or technology companies

if you are selling code to a 100 year old manufacturing company, or some other legacy space (healthcare, education, etc) then most likely they want stability not the new shiny

Post reply on HN