Re: [xsl] XSLT Hello World - outreach

[Ihe Onwuka <ihe.onwuka@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Graydon <graydon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 06:24:06PM +0100, David Rudel scripsit:
>> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 2:15 AM, Liam R E Quin <liam@xxxxxx> wrote:
>> > Ideas welcome.
>>
>> Would it make sense to start with considering what prevents people
>> from using XSLT for projects that yearn for it? I have a very limited
>> view on what this is, but from what I can tell, there are basically 3
>> things:
> [snip David Rudel's experiences for brevity, I'm by no means disagreeing
> with them!]
>
> What prevents people from using Lisp?
>

another community which routinely experiences doomed calls for syntax
prettification

>
> XML doesn't work like anything else; XML is graph theory, XSLT is an
> imperative tree-transformation language specifically for XML, and
> nothing else works that way.  People with solid coding skills from other
> domains try to use XSLT and wind up in the special hell that is trying
> to make XSLT do anything imperative.  It builds up a reservoir of
> loathing.
>

and thats why I wouldn't bother reaching out to them.

>
> Since the analysts and the project-managers don't like it either -- XML
> data is mostly illegible to them (doesn't go into Excel, you can't query
> it[1], etc.) -- this makes advocating for XSLT difficult.

and thats why I wouldn't bother talking to them.

>
>  Why should we
> go with rare (and more expensive) skills when we can find a way to do
> this with SQL?
>

That one I can answer. There are companies who strategy is to develop
in things like Haskell as guarantees getting some unbelievably smart
applicants.

X-Fu people are are smarter than your average bear, so you minimize
the risk of hiring a dufus which is far more costly. Also if your
project expands to encompass Semantic Web, how smart is the SQL hire
looking now.

Raise the spectre of the lossy round-trip from richer data formts to
SQL and back and ask why not avoid the problem altogether.

>
> I've never got anybody to believe XSLT was easy; I have got people to
> believe it was powerful, and I suspect the best way to evangelize for
> XSLT is along that axis. "Here are things we can do reliably that are
> much harder any other way".
>

sell that to problem owner and not the IT people who are geared up to
solve every problem only with tools they know how to use.