There exists a peculiar amnesia in software engineering regarding XML. Mention it in most circles and you will receive knowing smiles, dismissive waves, the sort of patronizing acknowledgment reserved for technologies deemed passé. “Oh, XML,” they say, as if the very syllables carry the weight of obsolescence. “We use JSON now. Much cleaner.”

  • wccrawford@discuss.online
    3·
    1 day ago

    It wasn’t even just that. In the companies I worked, it seemed like nobody other than me understood how to escape things for XML. I couldn’t even convince them to just use the right libraries/functions that auto-escape and parse things properly. They keep deciding they were smart enough to do it by hand. And it always ended up biting them.

    JSON, like Javascript (vs C++ or Java) is a lot more forgiving. It either works or it doesn’t, and the values are just strings or numbers. And some people even do the numbers as strings.

    • perviouslyiner@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 day ago

      And some people even do the numbers as strings

      Fun JSON fact of the day: Why does JSON prohibit leading zeroes? Because in some parsers they will become octal!