Re: Leventhal's challenge misses the point

["Guy Murphy" <guy-murphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mike.

The issue to my mind is simple.

Firstly we are having a discussion here. We are all making assertions based
on experience. Chants of "where's you evidence" can start getting childish
in a forum such as this. It isn't a court of law, it's a discussion forum.

I could be just as childish and say prove JavaScript is easier.

What I can assert is that there is less to learn with XSL than there is with
DOM+Script.

XSL makes querying easier than with DOM. And it removes the need to handle
itteration and recursion.

These are two areas that are very tricky for somebody new to process
description whether declarative or imperative.

Removing management of iteration and recursion alone to my mind is basis for
claiming XSL is easier than say JavaScript.

And when you say JavaScript I assume you meant ECMAScript. And can I ask,
are you assuming also that ECMAScript would be mandated as the standard
means for describing transformation? If not must we also learn Python, Perl
and TCL.

I am not being pedantic here, but you do realise that for a lot of
developers Python will be their first language of choice for working with
XML? And for a lot of Unix developers Perl will be their langauge of choice
if having to script.

If we persue the path of DOM+Script, we are probably going to be facing
DOM+Python+Perl+ECMAScript.

So which is easier to learn... XSL? Or DOM+Python+Perl+ECMAScript?

Cheers

    Guy


----- Original Message -----
From: Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@xxxxxxx>
To: <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, May 28, 1999 4:53 PM
Subject: RE: Leventhal's challenge misses the point


> > Firstly, I do not believe that non-programmers can't use XSL. I *am* a
> > non-programmer (and the fact that I subscribe to this list
> > doesn't change that) and I *have* learnt (well.. or am learning) to use
> XSL.
>
> But then, non-programmers can learn programming too. What we really want
is
> evidence that non-programmers can learn XSL more easily than they can
learn
> (say) Javascript.
>
> Mike Kay
>
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list