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
    0·
    2 months 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 using 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!

    • tyler@programming.dev
      01·
      2 months ago

      You are clearly one of those people that never had to deal with xml in a production system. Even with proper syntax highlighting, dealing with xml is a nightmare, whether it’s for configuration or data transmission. People switched to JSON because it’s better. Period. And that’s an incredibly low bar to set, because I don’t think JSON is that good either.

      Like another person said, all of these features of XML doesn’t make it nicer, it makes it worse, because it means you have to be ready for any of those features even if they’re never used.