March 22, 2006

The Day We All Settle On A Handful Of XML-based Document Standards Is The Day The Lawyers Won...

Sean McGrath, CTO, Propylon

...and we lost. We lost the battle, our desire to change, adapt, create, and be free from ANYTHING that might suggest we live within the confines of someone elses standards.

Folks will increasingly stop creating new XML-based languages at the front-end. Instead, the XML-based semantics will be tunnelled into a small set of existing vocabularies, most notably XHTML, RSS/Atom and ODF.

I'm sorry, but I could not disagree more with EVERYTHING in the above statement.

Don't let other folks define you. Don't give in. Don't give up.

NEVER STOP CREATING.

That includes XML formats, competitors to XML formats, and things that have nothing to do with XML formats at all. They're are just something you felt like building one day just cuz'

The above statement, and ANY others like it ANGER ME!

Don't Listen. Create.

And don't EVER stop! The very foundation of who we are as human beings can not be defined by the narrow-minded ideas and ideals of 500 years ago, 50 years ago, 5 years ago, or even today, tomorrow, and 5, 50, and 500 years from now. The desire to create, to be something others are not, or create something no one ever has, or just to be different for no other reason than you just feel like being different is what drives the very essence of the who you are, who I am, and who people in whom we will never meet, and in whom could give a rats a$$ about XML or anything like it.

And this comes from someone who actually REALLY LIKES ALL of the XML formats that Sean mentioned. Sean is a brilliant man, please dont take this to mean I think he's suddenly not.

I just dont believe we should EVER insist or suggest, or otherwise confine the imaginations in which we ourselves rely on each and every day to make us feel complete.

I think using Atom, and XHTML, and ODF, and OpenXML, and whatever else puts a smile on your face is what you should decide for yourself to use.

Don't let others make those decisions for you.

Thanks.

Question: Anybody know what happens when you start telling folks to confine themselves to a certain set of ideals? Even when you and I know those ideals are the right way because we've tried a whole bunch of other ways, and they didnt work as well, or at all, or whatever else?

Is there a reason why Lisp was one of the very first computer languages and is now makin a sudden resurgence? Yep.

Why didn't we just listen to our elders back then when they told us "you don't need this language, or that language, or any other language for that matter... you have all you need in Lisp"?

Because we wanted to do things our own way.

Should we have listened?

NO! Because LOTS of good things have been created since then, and lots of bad things too. But it was the human spirit and the desire to try new things, and push against the norm that drove us to push our imagination to the limits.

Why is that suddenly now different just because we recreated Lisp inside of a markup syntax called XML?