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Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

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Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#91

Post by hardwaresofton »

bhaak wrote: post #15

What's with all the XML hate? Of course, doing everything in XML is a stupid idea (e.g. XSLT and Ant) and thanks heaven that hype is over. But if I want something that is able to express data structures customized by myself, usually with hierarchical data that can be verified for validity and syntax (XML Schemas or old-school DTD), what other options are there? Doing hierarchical data in SQL is a bitch and if you wan…

S-expressions are also a reasonable choice, with some well-placed carriage returns and a serialization implementer that names things well

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#92

Post by sixbrx »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #20
adobriyan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This link needs to be posted again and again and again. I'm sure quite a lot of people will easily recognize it. :^) Subject: Re: S-exp vs XML, HTML, LaTeX (was: Why lisp is growing) https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.lang.li...

That's a wonderful rant - I particularly appreciate the digression into anti-bush rhetoric - but : 1. There's very little detail here; it's a nicely worded, emotionally charged piece that leaves a lot of detail unaddressed, e.g. "'I would like to hear why you think it is so bad, can you be more specific please?' If you really need more information, search the Net, please." That's not very helpful. 2. It argues for 's…

I thought the politics part was totally out of place and made him sound like a nut, FWIW.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#93

Post by bananas »

taeric wrote: post #85
bsder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because his design of git was so well-formed. Git is so well-designed that expert users manage to trash their repositories and propagate the damage. Maybe that's not a problem of libgit. But tools are both the infrastructure and the UI.

Not sure what you are referring to. What are some common ways "expert users" manage to "trash their repositories?"

5 minutes with me and git rebase usually do the job :)

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#94

Post by mrcharles »

On the game I'm currently working on, it's built very heavily around Lua. So for the save system, we simply fill a large Lua table, and then write that to disk, as Lua code. The 'save' file then simply becomes a Lua file that can be read directly into Lua.

This is absolutely amazing for debugging purposes. Also you never have to worry about corrupt save files or anything of it's ilk. Development is easier, diagnosing problems is easier, and using a programmatic data structure on the backend means that you can pretty much keep things clean and forward compatible with ease.

(Oh, also being able to debug by altering the save file in any way you want is a godsend).

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#95

Post by vacri »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #80
aashishkoirala wrote: post #37

This is what Linus does. He has strong opinions and he throws them around. You can't let that get to you. Both XML and JSON are just fine if used properly.

This is the first profanity-free Linus rant that I've read in a long time.

Almost all of Torvalds' "profanity rants" that get passed around are the result of frustration at an existing conversation, and you can find profanity-free comments by him simply by checking out a slightly earlier one.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#96

Post by tomphoolery »

bhaak wrote: post #15

What's with all the XML hate? Of course, doing everything in XML is a stupid idea (e.g. XSLT and Ant) and thanks heaven that hype is over. But if I want something that is able to express data structures customized by myself, usually with hierarchical data that can be verified for validity and syntax (XML Schemas or old-school DTD), what other options are there? Doing hierarchical data in SQL is a bitch and if you wan…

Unfortunately, XML is way too open-ended for my tastes. You end up getting entire rows of DB content (with full text paragraphs and everything) entirely in one tag, with attributes and values. There are so many options that you typically get a lot of idiot programmers who don't understand the purpose of all the shit in XML, so they fuck up their implementation.

Simply put, XML does not correctly model the data by which we intend to interchange. It was a noble effort, but it didn't come from a place of innovation. It came from corporate needs for standardization.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#97

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

cbsmith wrote: post #74
tzury wrote: post #5

I just realized that Linus' posts are the only reason I ever go to Google Plus.

The question nobody is asking, but actually should is: I wonder what other good G+ content you are missing? G+ is largely misunderstood. It is a lousy tool for interaction with people connected to you purely socially. It's a very good way to find and interact with people connected to you by interest.

This is exactly how I explain Google+ to folks. It's built for communities, not cliques.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#98

Post by rbehrends »

k__ wrote: post #89
rbehrends wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML is unnecessarily verbose, for the supposed sake of human readability. But used as a serialization format, it isn't really readable or editable by humans (except in the sense that a Turing machine is programmable): remember that the ML in XML stands for "markup language", and SGML, its predecessor, was designed as a way of marking up normal text, not littering data with angular brackets and identifiers. (XML/SGML…

> the problem is that XML has prevented the adoption of something better What would be better?

That depends on your specific goals. But essentially, XML schemas are sort of like attribute grammars, except with an unnecessarily convoluted syntax, and yet more limited in their expressiveness than attribute grammars (because whatever constraints you need have to be procrusteanized into XML schemas).

Even if you were to stick with XML semantics as is, you could improve the syntax to be actually readable and eliminate the angle bracket tax [1, 2].

[1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/xml-the-angle-bracket-tax/

[2] http://blog.codinghorror.com/revisiting-the-xml-angle-bracke...

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#99

Post by aashishkoirala »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #80
aashishkoirala wrote: post #37

This is what Linus does. He has strong opinions and he throws them around. You can't let that get to you. Both XML and JSON are just fine if used properly.

This is the first profanity-free Linus rant that I've read in a long time.

Haha, right. I play in the .NET space, so it's never going to happen, but God help us both if I ever have to end up working for this guy.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “I'm happily hacking on a new save format using ‘libgit2’”

#100

Post by sanderjd »

bananas wrote: post #63
icebraining wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the following is not acceptable as it breaks the semantics of JSON and requires a secondary deserialisation step as strings ain't numbers... XML strings ain't numbers neither. You can throw a big decimal deserialiser (e.g. as a custom deserialization adapter) at a JSON document as well.

Let's break this down into two statements: XML doesn't have strings (or types at all really) JSON strings are strings. There is a massive semantic difference here when it comes to parsing.

What is that massive semantic difference? If you want the number represented by 1e999 as the value for salary, at some point, something has to take "1e999", whether you call it a string or a something-with-no-type, and turn it into a number. Your deserializer has to know to do that in either case.
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