At 02:54 PM 08/22/2001 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
(and why does a *database* have XML-conversion functions??)
XML's a decent match with tuples, and providing an easily standardized and malleable data interchange format is not only an easy thing to bolt on but a potentially big win for usability, as well as providing the lastest buzzword compliance. Of course, just because you *can* use it to make things cleaner instead of uglier and more complex doesn't mean you have to.
I see a lot of engineering effort wasted on silly fads. Good people spending days and sometimes weeks reinventing wheels that represent problems that were solved decades ago, just because the solutions developed then, despite being proven and correct, are presently out of style. It's a waste of resources and it pisses me off.
Lots of the recent user interface trends are a waste of, umm, skins. A certain 3.5-letter-acronym company or its suppliers recently put lots of effort into enhancing its secure VPN dialer product, and I *wish* they'd focused on testing the Mac product instead of doing customizable look&feel for the Windoze versions...