For a long time, I was not at all fond of XML. The grandiose claims ofuniversal document exchanges, universal editors, and so on were clearlybogus; as lots of people said, understanding the syntax gives you noclue about the semantics. It all smelled of hype and overselling, withXML the latest in a long line of next big things for the enterpriseymarket.

Then it struck me one day :

XML is a great way to not write a parser .

If you need to write and then read

I read (or sometimes skim) a relatively decent number of blogs, and assomeone who writes one too I wind up noticing various aspects of theexperience. One of the things I've noticed is that I am both quitepredictable and quite divided about reading comments on entries; thereare some blogs where I always read the comments and there are a lotwhere I never do, but there are almost none where I sometimes read themand sometimes don't.

In thinking about this, I think that there