Why do so many proponents of new technologies spend so much time misrepresenting existing technologies and spreading misinformation about them?
Do they misrepresent the existing technologies in order to make the new technology they are selling look better?
Or did they get involved in the new technology only because they failed to understand the existing technology and how to use it well?
While #1 is certainly not inexistent, I think that #2 dominates, at least among technical folks (a sort of variant of Bloomian strong misreading, perhaps). But that may be merely another instance of the effect described at http://tinyurl.com/69qsay .
Perhaps because the existing technology was promoted for inappropriate uses. And because it was then used for things it isn’t very good at, people have a very low opinion of it, and maybe even hate it.
Or maybe because the advocates of the existing technology condemn any alternative technologies and say that you must use the existing technology and so it seems that the only way to get an alternative technology accepted is to destroy the existing one.
Just to be clear, we’re talking about C++, aren’t we? I’m not a good enough writer to copy with all this abstraction.
That should have been ‘cope with all this abstraction’. It’s almost like I was trying to prove a point when all I wanted was to make a bad joke.
Hello Michael,
should I as a homework create some examples where WXS is at least impractical in definition of compound documents, so you can then as a homework tell me where I’m lacking WXS knowledge?
Daniel James: No, I think that MSM is talking about WXS (or XSD or W3C XML Schema if you like) and a new technology here is NVDL. But yes, in some sense you can compare WXS to C++ and NVDL to … hmm, what about LISP or may be Forth? ;-D
Daniel, you may have a point. Frustration with rhetoric or tactics of the promoters of any technology can surely play a part in reactions to the technology (even though it has been remarked here more than once in the last few days that the presentation of a bad argument in favor of some proposition P does not constitute a good argument for disbelieving P — so the fact that arguments for a given technology are flawed or irritating or overstated does not in fact mean that the technology is no good, only that we have to examine and judge it ourselves, and possibly approve of it despite rather than because of the arguments of its friends).
Jirka, if you believe the hat fits, you are welcome to wear it :).
But there was a reason I did not name any technology specifically. Although there was a specific occasion for this thought occurring to me, the phenomenon is one that can be observed in a number of places. And though I don’t have a guilty conscience on this score, there may be people who believe me guilty of one or the other of the errors mentioned, so I don’t mean to cast stones or aspersions.
With regard to XSD and NVDL, I will gladly accept the challenge to show how I would expect XSD schema documents to work for the compount document example you use as a motivating example in your presentation of NVDL. It should appear here as a blog post in the coming weeks (but I have got to start spending more time on my day job, so it may not be fore a few weeks). You’ve already delivered one example, so unless you are keen to do it, you should not feel obligated to prepare more; I would welcome them if you do feel so inclined, though: careful discussion of concrete examples can produce much better mutual understanding.