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.”

  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
    5·
    5 hours ago

    I never understood why people would say JSON is superior, and why XML seemed to be getting rarer, but the author explains it:

    XML was not abandoned because it was inadequate; it was abandoned because JavaScript won.

    I’ve been unsing it ever since I started using Linux because my favorite window manager uses it, and because of a long-running pet project that is almost just as old: first I used XML tools to parse web pages, later I switched to dedicated data providers that offered both XML and JSON formats, and stuck to what I knew.

    I’m guessing that another reason devs - especially web devs - prefer JSON over XML is that the latter uses more bytes to transport the same amount of raw data. One XML file will be somewhat larger than one JSON file with the same content. That advantage is of course dwarved by all the other media and helper scripts - nay, frameworks, devs use to develop websites.

    BTW, XML is very readable with syntax highlighting and easily editable if your code editor has some very basic completion for it. And it has comments!

    • Kissaki@programming.devOPEnglish
      3·
      6 hours ago

      The readability and obviousness of XML can not be overstated. JSON is simple and dense (within the limit of text). But look at JSON alone, and all you can do is hope for named fields. Outside of that, you depend on context knowledge and specific structure and naming context.

      Whenever I start editing json config files I have to be careful about trailing commas, structure with opening and closing parens, placement and field naming. The best you can do is offer a default-filled config file that already has the full structure.

      While XML does not solve all of it, it certainly is more descriptive and more structured, easing many of those pain points.

      It’s interesting that web tech had XML in the early stages of AJAX, the dynamic web. But in the end, we sent JSON through XMLHttpRequest. JSON won.