No. Everybody uses it because product managers come along and say we have to
have XML on "the box" or because programmers are too lazy to write a parser.
Don't get me wrong...XML is *wonderful* for certain things. Configuration
files for UNIX/Linux daemons is not one of them.
Just to add to the general bitch session, I've seen XML add to
mindless bloat in applications.
I've recently had the misfortune of trying to get a modern GUI
application running on Solaris 8, which meant compiling about 20 packages.
GTK depends on pango which depends on fontconfig which depends on expat.
Other Gnome software depends on libxml. So I end up having to load
at least two XML parsers when I load my application. I can easily see
cases where I might end up loading three or four different XML parsers
to support an application.
Even people like Tim Bray have complained about the awkwardness of
working with XML APIs.
When I wake up in a particularly evil mood, I think about writing
up an RFC for a proposal to reformulate Java in XML. It would be as
damaging as a worm that crashes the whole net -- I just see the armies
of CEOs, project managers, computer book authors all marching to their
doom...
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