Rev Create XML Tree

[Ben Rubinstein]

On 28/07/2010 18:49, J. Landman Gay wrote:
> On 7/28/10 11:33 AM, Mark Wieder wrote:
>
>> ...and for my two cents' worth, it's hard to think of using the terms
>> "xml" and "performance" in the same thought...
>>
>
> Yeah. And it's hard to work with in all kinds of ways. I can't figure
> out why it's become the de facto standard for so many things. Surely
> there's a better way.

I think the three of us must be old!  I used to sniff at XML too: not only the 
performance implications of parsing it, but also the appalling verbosity as a 
format.

But, pardoning me for pointing out (and apologies in advance if it's just me) 
we're... ol^H^H experienced; we've grown up when every byte and cpu cycle was 
precious and it was worth hours or days to save a few.  Now we're conserving 
the wrong things: because CPUs are incredibly fast, and RAM is vast, and 
drives are huge, and the cloud is inexhaustible... and the resource that is 
really scarce now is developer time.  XML saves a great deal of that, and the 
cost in performance and compactness is a small price to pay.

The advent of smartphones made me think for the first time in years that at 
last my rusty old reactions, that my young colleagues sneer at, had a value 
again - but it turns out that even these tiny things have such performance and 
capacity that I'm wrong, yet again.

yrs aye,

'Old Ben'