XSLT and Perl (was: Documenting stylesheets)

["Eliot, Topher" <Christopher_Eliot@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Funny that you should bring up Perl.  I've been telling people lately
that I'm learning XSLT, and I don't like it for the same reason I don't
like Perl:  way too many subtle, tricky aspects to it.  It's seductively
easy to do a little bit with either of these languages, but then as your
needs grow more complex, the learning curve becomes downright vertical.
I don't share your optimistic view that "once you're adept at it, it's
easy...".

Perl has the added drawback of a community of users many of who seem to
share the belief that "more cryptic is more better".  Fortunately I haven't
found that to be true with XSLT (yet).

> I find XSLT, and XPath in particular, to be almost like Perl: 
> once you're
> adept at it, it's easy to figure out what it's doing at a 
> glance - but when
> you're first starting out, it can be a bit difficult to 
> sight-read. My rule
> of thumb is: if I have to think about it for more than a 
> couple of seconds,
> I comment it. 


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