Readit NewsXML without attributes probably would have seen wide and ready adoption.
“Keep things flat” is current good advice in terms of usability. That means favor attributes over children.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<methodCall>
<methodName>math.add</methodName>
<params>
<param>
<value><int>5</int></value>
</param>
<param>
<value><int>7</int></value>
</param>
</params>
</methodCall>
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "math.add",
"params": [5, 7],
"id": 1
}
It’s a mediocre data storage language.
The pro-XML narrative always sounded like what you wrote, as far back as I can remember: The XML people would tell you it was beautiful and perfect and better than everything as long as everyone would just do everything perfectly right at every step. Then you got into the real world and it was frustrating to deal with on every level. The realities of real-world development meant that the picture-perfect XML universe we were promised wasn't practical.
I don't understand your comparison to containerization. That feels like apples and oragnes.
Imagine if instead of the current Dockerfile format, we used XML, which was dynamically generated from lists of packages, and filtered and updates according to RSS feeds describing CSVs and package updates.
I’m not saying this is anything other than strange fantasy. And not a particularly nice fantasy either.
XML failed because it forced devs to spend tons of unproductive time on it
But that universe did not happen.
Lots of "modern" tooling works around the need. For example, in a world of Docker and Kubernetes, are those standards really that important?
I would blame the adoption of containerization for the lack of interest in XML standards, but by the time containerization happened, XML had been all but abandoned.
Maybe it was the adoption of Python, whose JSON libraries are much nicer than XML. Maybe it was the fact that so few XML specs every became mainstream.
In terms of effort, there is a huge tail in XML, where you're trying to get things working, but getting little in return for that effort. XLST is supposed to be the glue that keeps it all together, but there is no "it" to keep together.
XML also does not play very nice with streaming technologies.
I suspect that eventually XML will make a comeback. Or maybe another SGML dialect. But that time is not now.
VPN's are great for this. Just install the VPN, have it block access to adult sites, and have it alert me of any suspicious attempts.
It's bewildering how VPN companies have branded their technology as "anti-censorship" and "privacy-focused." VPN's are a censor's best friend.
DNS services are taking the opposite approach: they start by having a censorship feature (blocking malware, adult ads, etc), and now are adding anti-censorship options.
There's nothing about connecting to a different network, or using a different DNS provider, that is anti-censorship.
France includes illegal drug traffic and illegal prostitution in its gdp too
JSON is too simplistic.
Something built from s-expressions would probably have been ideal but we've known that for 70 years.