> I've looked at pages and pages of POM files, trying to learn things. And my > conclusion is that Maven was _fundamentally flawed_ in choosing XML as its > base.
XML isn't evil. XML is a compromise between human-readable and computer-readable data. It's neither the best nor the worst format. If you want something more friendlier, check out Polyglot Maven. Also, XML isn't the memory representation of Maven's data structures. XML is just the expressed format. So it's not a "fundamental flaw" by any stretch. Paul On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Kenneth McDonald <kenneth.m.mcdon...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: >> If a build can be described as a small number of facts, XML is an >> unobjectional representation for those facts. If a POM fits on a page, >> verbosity of XML is just not an issue. > > Yeah, but a build often does not fit on a page, and I'm building some pretty > simple stuff! > > To argue for the flexibity of Maven is (AFAIK) defensible. It's power (from > what little knowledge I have), likewise. > > But, I'm sorry to say, the verbosity of XML is a major, major issue. I bring > you back to the simple fact of: If XML were so expressive, why aren't most > modern languages written in XML? If programmers had to write their systems in > a dialect of XML, put in the redundant tags, escape everything that _isn't_ a > literal, etc., then we would have very poor programmer productivity. > > I've looked at pages and pages of POM files, trying to learn things. And my > conclusion is that Maven was _fundamentally flawed_ in choosing XML as its > base. > > Cheers, > Ken > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@maven.apache.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@maven.apache.org
