XML Sucks

3 min read Original article ↗

“The essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well.” – Phil Wadler, POPL 2003

Quotes

“Most xml i’ve seen makes me think i’m dyslexic. it also looks constipated, and two health problems in one standard is just too much.” – Charles Forsyth on 9fans

“Some part of me desperately wants to believe that XML-RPC is some kind of elaborate joke, like a cross between Discordianism and IP Over Avian Carriers.” – Ex-Cyber on #plan9

“Any damn fool could produce a better data format than XML” – James Clark 2007-04-06

Alexander Viro on linux-kernel mailing list:

   > > Or even XML. Ouch! No need to throw things at me!
   >
   > It seems they would be thrown! XML in kernel is too much. OpenOffice and

   They won't be thrown.  They will be slowly driven under the nails, so that
   victim could experience the joy equal to that of dealing with XML.

“XML is simply lisp done wrong.” – Alan Cox

“XML is like violence. Sure, it seems like a quick and easy solution at first, but then it spirals out of control into utter chaos.” – Sarkos in reddit

“XML is a classic political compromise: it balances the needs of man and machine by being equally unreadable to both.” – Matthew Might

“XML combines the efficiency of text files with the readability of binary files” – unknown

XSL-T

  • XSLT is a failure wrapped in pain. There’s no job for which XSLT is the right tool. If you think you found a job for which XSLT is a good tool, chances are the job itself is fucked up. – masklinn

  • Roman numerals and the web API - XSLT makes OOMs easy!

  • Open Letter to XSLT Fans by Michael Snoyman.

XML Namespaces

See the namespace confusion page in the WHATWG wiki for evidence of how much XML namespaces suck.

Alternatives

  • Simple custom text(UTF-8) formats
  • sexprs
  • csv
  • json
  • ndb(6)-like

See also