Subject: Re: Difference between LISP and C++ From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:56:47 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3245093807039386@naggum.no> * Bob Bane <bane@removeme.gst.com> | If there's any justice in the world, a few years from now when the | Semantic Web fails to improve web searching (it's just a new, cruftier | syntax for ontologies that attempt to model the real world, and those | ontologies are just as fragile and intractible now as they were 20 years | ago), there will be an "XML Winter". I predicted the SGML winter to occur within a decade in 1994. Then SGML died and spawned a hell-child, instead. One of the best reasons to avoid XML at all cost (which is an amusing way to put it since no technology decision can save you more money than a decision not to use XML) is that the information you store into XML form becomes even more fragile and outdatable than whatever other format you could have used once you started to think about your data formats. Since thinking about something will always be better than not thinking about something, what gains XML have in an organization that uses it comes from thinking about their data formats, but like most people who become satisfied with, if not enamored with, the first thing they meet that does not stink, XML is better than utterly braindamaged crap. To many, this is so unusual that they think XML must be good. Instead, it is only /less/ braindamaged crap, and the little good it has is completely defeated by the rest of it. | If we're *really* lucky, Java and C#/.NET will be dragged down along with | XML. Well, I think XML and Microsoft will go down together. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.