Re: Do people dislike parentheses or the conceptual mismatch with trees?

Duane Rettig <duane@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Ville Oikarinen <ville@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Duane Rettig wrote:

I think I now know why you've been hitting your head against a wall in
this group. You talk about domain-specific modelling and speak as if we
know nothing of the term.

If I gave that impression, it was completely accidental. Of course I know
the role lisp has had in DSL creation for decades.

The more I have to wonder _why_ XML was ever even born let alone got so
popular.

Because it wasn't Lisp. When the AI Winter hit mid-90s, AI had lost
companies billions of dollars in research money because the AI hype
had predicted returns on investment that were overly optimistic to the
tune of at least twice as long (e.g. 10 years rather than 5 years).
AI became a hated name, and Lisp became the scapegoat as the language
of choice of AI. When during that time I would show people an example
of EDIF files, they would tend to screw up their noses and say "looks
like lisp, to me". End of conversation. My theory is that XML is
successful because it does a good job of getting close to Lisp-like
without _looking_ like Lisp.

In other words, to the extent that a manager (or even a techie)
equates AI to Lisp, and Lisp to parentheses, it is not a hard leap for
some to make that parentheses spell money lost. An incorrect leap,
but an easy one nonetheless.


Unfortunately, I think there is some truth to that.

I also think it is partially due to the fact that for many people, XML was
one solution to the 'problems' people had encountered with HTML (and to a
lesser extent SGML) combined with a general scary ignorance regarding what
I had once thought were basic concepts and theories that any programmer
would have. Those who recognised the similarity in structure between XML
and s-expressions and were able to appreciate the benefits that would come
from using s-experessions also knew it would be a very difficult job to
sell it as too many would see it as being too close to lisp. However, there
is also a really really large group of people out there who have no idea
what s-expressions are and who see XML as just being a 'well formed'
version of HTML (often they don't even know what SGML is). For this group,
XML is a 'natural' extension that is superior to the data as HTML world
they have grown up in (their programming has been essentially web based
using Java, VB, PHP and maybe some perl). To this group, XML is an amazing
development as it makes parsing almost trivial compared to what they have
had to do with HTML. For them, XML is familiar and fits with their model of
things.

The other point is that by creating hype over XML, you could also sell
yourself as an XML expert, which sounds a bit more impressive to many
consultants/managers than trying to sell yourself as an expert with lisp or
s-expressions. It sounds new, so it must be better (I still hear people
criticise perfectly good software on the basis it is written in lisp, which
is 'old' and therefore cannot be as good as something written in a language
that is 'new').

This is not unusual. Much of what we see as 'new' advances often looks
remarkably like something from the past, just with a new coat of paint. A
colleague of mine reckons its all like hem lines - they go up and they go
down, but they are always there. Others would probably just talk about
swings and round-a-bouts. While it is true that s-expressions may have some
advantages over XML in some applications, the reality is that most of the
time, XML is being used in a way that the additional benefits of
s-expressions are unlikely to be seen as a benefit.

Tim



--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
.

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