Look who's here.

Here's Matt Mower and me in my home/office in Gradisca now. We've done a lot of planning about future products and development in the last two days. Very cool. We also plan to buy a castle, but this of course will happen after the new products ";->" [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]

Is this an iMac I see before me..?

New-fangled XML gubbins.

I'd like to make a couple of clarifications:

1. I didn't really take a look at SuperX++.  Or rather that's exactly what I did.  I looked at that chunk of code on the page and went "ugh!"
2. I don't agree with the statement "XML is both easily human and...".  Computer readable?  Yes.  Human readable, gods no.  Not that example anyway.

I've had this argument before but so far I haven't seen any good reason for XML programming languages.  In conversation with the author of ObjectBox I wondered about using such a language for building advanced coding toolsets but I sure as hell don't want to be typing this stuff in!  You, of course, may type in whatever you like :)

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

Yes, I hesitated to type "human readable" :)! Though even in IE's xml renderer, readability is greatly improved. This particular language may be the best representative of the concept [paradoxically, this language has spwaned a varient which doesn't use xml at all].

Intuitively, an XML programming language appeals to me. I see this type of programming as fairly high level, such as stitching services and data together into web applications in Recombinant Growth -- not as a replacement for traditional programming language. Programming in an XML langauge should be easier, for the task at hand.

Does this justify XML for programming? I need to put more thought into this intuition. [Brain Off]

One of the questions that springs to my mind is: Why XML?  Other than off-the-shelf parsers (and language parsing is not a big deal, a tool like ANTLR reduces this problem pretty quick and provides a whole lot more besides) what does having the language in XML really achieve?

As I said in my earlier post the only future I see for this (long term) is if it makes it significantly easier to build coding toolsets such as refactoring engines and intelligent IDE's.  Maybe if these languages came with some kind of OWL ontology to allow their comprehension by other languages or toolsets...

Otherwise what's the point?  ASCII source is pretty easily transferred and I think XML tags can be a positive hindrance to comprehension (for which I cite the oft villified but repeated attempts to produce concise or simple XML variants).  But, hey, we can use namespaces to mix two different XML languages in one source file right?

Telewest-NTL merger possible: Burdick. Cable Guys get it on [The Register]

This is either great news for NTL customers or sucktastic news for Telewest users.  Overall i'm not sure that a cable monopoly is a healthy thing...

Users call for anti-NTL protest. Valentine's Day massacre [The Register]

BlueYonder execs take note.

Just bad from 3 fantastic days in Italy.   Paolo and I have been scheming (no this is not a reference to my burgeoning interest in Lisp) and we've got something pretty cool in the works.  More details soon I hope.

Of course I am now struggling to type on this non-Italian, non-Mac keyboard.  If I don't watch out he'll have me converted.  Now, where's that Cmd key ;-)