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pmuellr is Patrick Mueller

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

appropriateness

Bill de hÓra points out some seeming discrepancies in Jeff Atwood's views on XML. Or my reading-between-the-lines, XML-ish markup languages, like HTML. Here's my take:

  • XML is a great way to mark up text.
  • XML is a terrible way to represent data.

I see no discrepancies here. My view of XML as a text markup language are biased given that I used GML for many years, since 1983 or so, to produce documentation.

Likewise, though I've often pooped all over Java, claiming it's a terrible language, I think there is (or was anyway) a place for it:

  • Java could have been a great replacement for C, in many cases.
  • Java is a terrible language with which to build applications.

I'd no more want to build a web or desktop app with Java (read: C), than I would want to write a sound driver in JavaScript.

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