Tell HN: Generational Gap
So this week, I was teaching a new employee about the system. He is 30 years old and has been in the industry for six years now. At one point, I described an external tool that we use, which produces an XML file. Something felt off about his questions, and then a realization hit me:
"Do you know what XML is?"
He didn't.
I have a few takeaways:
1. I'm old. 2. I envy him—I hate XML. 99% of the time, it actively sabotages my work. 3. JSON simplicity won.
That's it. No moral.
"I envy him" - when I read at HN in comments when people discuss something I don't know, I envy them. I suspect that OP is also more about this (reading from his frustration), but "knowing something" doesn't always mean "have to work with something". Not knowing even at least vaguely that XML is something related to HTML is a flag of the lack of interest in the sphere you're working in
You assume too much. You have no idea what sphere I'm working in. we are so far removed from html that that it will make more sense to us to contribute to the OS/390 kernel if that was feasible
XML has robust tooling. JSON is created and used haphazardly.