--- Austin Ziegler <austin / halostatue.ca> wrote:

> Erm. Yes. And Ruby does have a single core type: an
> object. Sure,
> there's some language syntax to help around other
> common types
> defined in the C portion of the Ruby library
> (numerics, strings,
> arrays, hashes), but I think you're buying into the
> marketing hype
> about XML. Ruby *already provides* data about data.
> If you create
> your object hierarchy for your programs correctly.
> 
> XML is best suited as a transmission data type
> (except its
> verbosity, but that's neither here nor there). It
> allows for
> meaningful data serialization across languages. It
> is not well
> suited as a "native" data type -- because it's
> unnecessarily
> verbose and doesn't really provide meaningful
> information to the
> program. If I have:
> 
>   <address>
>     <first></first>
>     <last></last>
>     ...
>   </address>
> 
> I am most likely to represent that as an object in
> my program:
> 
>   class Address
>     attr_accessor :first
>     attr_accessor :last
>   end
> 
> I think you're mixing up what is properly a
> separation of concerns
> here.

No, we've just got a difference of opinion. Your
tieing up your data writing an interface for it. There
may be good reasons to do so. Then there may not.

> but I think you're buying into the
> marketing hype
> about XML. 

Sorry, but i gotta tell you i bot into this xml thing
a long time ago. I was skeptical at first but i now
find myself with more and interesting ways to use xml
to PROGRAM. I hardly ever send it over the wire.

Whether or not is would make Ruby unnecessarily slow
or inefficient, i really could not say, probably so,
i'd guess. Make my programs better? Absolutely.

Again, i can do that with rexml now. Just kicking
around an idea. 

pv




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