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Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

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Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#71

Post by rhdunn »

coldtea wrote: post #44
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #39

> a contrast between Claude’s modern approach [...] XML, a technology dating back to 1998 Are we really at the point where some people see XML as a spooky old technology? The phrasing dotted around this article makes me feel that way. I find this quite strange.

XML has been "spooky old technology" for over a decade now. It's heyday was something like 2002. Nobody dares advertise the XML capabilities of their product (which back then everybody did), nobody considers it either hot new thing (like back then) or mature - just obsolete enterprise shit. It's about as popular now as J2EE, except to people that think "10 years ago" means 1999.

XML is used a lot in standards and publishing industries -- JATS, EPUB, ODF, DOCX/XLSX/..., DocBook, etc. are all XML based/use XML.

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#72

Post by eduction »

coldtea wrote: post #44
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #39

> a contrast between Claude’s modern approach [...] XML, a technology dating back to 1998 Are we really at the point where some people see XML as a spooky old technology? The phrasing dotted around this article makes me feel that way. I find this quite strange.

XML has been "spooky old technology" for over a decade now. It's heyday was something like 2002. Nobody dares advertise the XML capabilities of their product (which back then everybody did), nobody considers it either hot new thing (like back then) or mature - just obsolete enterprise shit. It's about as popular now as J2EE, except to people that think "10 years ago" means 1999.

Obsolete enterprise shit I guess includes podcasting. Impressive for the enterprise.

I’d be very curious what lasting open formats JSON has been used to build.

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#73

Post by actionfromafar »

hbarka wrote: post #53
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #39

> a contrast between Claude’s modern approach [...] XML, a technology dating back to 1998 Are we really at the point where some people see XML as a spooky old technology? The phrasing dotted around this article makes me feel that way. I find this quite strange.

If you think XML is old tech, wait until you hear of EDI, still powering Walmart and Amazon logistics. XML came in like a wrecking ball with its self-documenting promise designed to replace that cryptic pesky payload called EDI. XML promised to solve world hunger. It spawned SOAP, XML over RPC, DOM, DTD, the heyday was beautiful and Microsoft was leading the charge. C# was also right around this time. Consulting firm…

EDI is XML now.

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#74

Post by hkbuilds »

This matches my experience building AI-powered analysis tools. Structured output from LLMs is dramatically more reliable when you give the model clear delimiters to work with.

One thing I've found: even with XML tags, you still need to validate and parse defensively. Models will occasionally nest tags wrong, omit closing tags, or hallucinate new tag names. Having a fallback parser that extracts content even from malformed XML has saved me more than once.

The real win is that XML tags give you a natural way to do few-shot prompting with structure. You can show the model exactly what shape the output should take, and it follows remarkably well.

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#75

Post by prima-facie »

cyanydeez wrote: post #58
prima-facie wrote: post #55

Amazing how an entire profession that until yesterday would pride itself on precision, clarity (in thought and in writing), efficiency, and formality, has now descended into complete quackery.

Are you talking about the office of the president of the united states? This vague posting is kind dumb.

It's a simple observation. I'm not here to win internet points. I've never before seen so much cargo-culting and mystic belief among engineers.

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#76

Post by michaelbarton »

rhdunn wrote: post #71
coldtea wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML has been "spooky old technology" for over a decade now. It's heyday was something like 2002. Nobody dares advertise the XML capabilities of their product (which back then everybody did), nobody considers it either hot new thing (like back then) or mature - just obsolete enterprise shit. It's about as popular now as J2EE, except to people that think "10 years ago" means 1999.

XML is used a lot in standards and publishing industries -- JATS, EPUB, ODF, DOCX/XLSX/..., DocBook, etc. are all XML based/use XML.

Without being facetious, isn’t HTML a dialect of XML and very widely used?

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#77

Post by girvo »

coldtea wrote: post #44
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #39

> a contrast between Claude’s modern approach [...] XML, a technology dating back to 1998 Are we really at the point where some people see XML as a spooky old technology? The phrasing dotted around this article makes me feel that way. I find this quite strange.

XML has been "spooky old technology" for over a decade now. It's heyday was something like 2002. Nobody dares advertise the XML capabilities of their product (which back then everybody did), nobody considers it either hot new thing (like back then) or mature - just obsolete enterprise shit. It's about as popular now as J2EE, except to people that think "10 years ago" means 1999.

I kind of miss SOAP. Ahead of its time? Probably not, but I built some cool things on top of it

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#78

Post by Twisol »

michaelbarton wrote: post #76
rhdunn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML is used a lot in standards and publishing industries -- JATS, EPUB, ODF, DOCX/XLSX/..., DocBook, etc. are all XML based/use XML.

Without being facetious, isn’t HTML a dialect of XML and very widely used?

HTML is actually a dialect of SGML. XHTML was an attempt to move to an XML-based foundation, but XML's strictness in parsing worked against it, and eventually folks just standardized how HTML parsers should interpret ill-formed HTML instead.

Re: Why XML tags are so fundamental to Claude

#79

Post by vitejose »

michaelbarton wrote: post #76
rhdunn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML is used a lot in standards and publishing industries -- JATS, EPUB, ODF, DOCX/XLSX/..., DocBook, etc. are all XML based/use XML.

Without being facetious, isn’t HTML a dialect of XML and very widely used?

No, HTML was historically supposed to be a subset of SGML; XML is also an application of SGML. XHTML is the XML version of HTML. As of HTML5, HTML is no longer technically SGML or XML.
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