10 years of XML

Since XML is 10 years of age I thought I’d give it the rant treatment. I’ve long grumbled about XML. Here’s why:

• XML is hard to parse computationally (do not regex or grep)
• XML is not human readable
• XML is hard to create
• Google’s Gdata ATOM XML I find is hard to UPDATE
• Alternatives like CSV for unstructured data (often the case) is so much faster and easier
• No native support for XML in my $EDITOR vim
• XML does not work on the Web
• Related XSLT for transforming XML is seriously not fun. XSLT unnecessarily bloats a Web browser. :(
• XML has draconian error handling
• XML attributes makes things ambiguous for markup
• Near impossible to diff (and nicely version control)

A testament to XML‘s waning popularity must have been at the Xtech2008‘s XML@10 when a handful of die hards showed.

I hope to continue see more of JSON, CSV and HTML.