I Love XML!
Aug 22, 2003 programmingandInterfacesShare/Save
Entirely apart from how amazing the concept of Web Services is, and how it’s allowed me to suck info off of Amazon’s servers for the music I’m listening to, I love XML because it’s the backbone of RSS, and I just found out today that Craigslist has RSS feeds!
They’re at the end of every category page. So I can now keep tabs on all the new furniture in Manhattan. Or internet engineering jobs in Queens. Or casual encounters in all of New York. Cause those shits are funny.
August 22nd, 2003 at 2:41 pm
What the hell does all this mumbo jumbo mean? I want to understand what the internet can do too.
August 22nd, 2003 at 2:42 pm
I don’t know how to program XML. I think you are a better programmer than I am. You seem to have much more drive and determination than I do in the whole number and symbol crunching business, which is good. (less good for me, but hey)
–soceii
August 22nd, 2003 at 3:10 pm
Soce, why don’t you tell that to the guys you work for? Maybe they’ll give ME a job!
Seriously though, it’s really just that I care a lot more – nothing to do with knowledge or skill. XML is just a way to represent data which you can manipulate through your programming language of choice. You just have to learn the specifics, and then actually give two shits about it.
Dan, the gory details of XML and Web Services are beyond me, but I will do my best to explain what I can.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) came out of HTML to some extent. HTML has all these tags, like <A> and <IMG> etc., that specify particular elements on a webpage. XML is an abstraction of that concept for storing data.
Some theoretical XML as an example:
<people> <person> <name>Dan</name> <gender>male</gender> <funnynameusedonmyblog>DanG</funnynameusedonmyblog> </person> <person> <name>Andrew</name> <gender>male</gender> <funnynameusedonmyblog>soce, the elemental wizard</funnynameusedonmyblog> </person> </people>
It’s missing some important shit, but that’s beside the point. The idea is that I could have a database of all kinds of information stored in XML, and I could then make it open to web and application programmers alike whose code would access that data, parse it into something meaningful, and then use it as if it were part of their own application.
So for example, there are the album covers I have in my “Listening” section. I send the name of the album and the artist to Amazon Web Services, which responds with XML data representing the album I asked for with the price, some thumbnail images, etc. So instead of having to say “Here’s the album I’m listening to – go look it up on Amazon,” I can do the lookup for you transparently and have all the info right there in front of you.
An article I was reading about Web Services (don’t remember where) recently gives another good example. It talked about a corporate calendar program that keeps track of where you’re going, when you need to be where, etc. If you need to fly to San Francisco tomorrow, and your calendar application knows that, normally you have to look at the date and time on your calendar, go to the flight application, try to book a flight for that time, and then copy and paste that back into the calendar. If you can’t find a flight for that time, you’ve got to coordinate when there are flights with when your calendar says you’re free – in managing these two programs at once, you’re doing the computer’s job yourself! Wouldn’t it make more sense if your calendar program could just talk to the flight program?
If the flight program has some kind of web services exposed, it can.
RSS, the reason I brought this up in the first place, is a lot simpler. Basically, it takes a weblog or a news site like Slashdot, and condenses it into XML, so that you can treat it as you will. Usually, this means subscribing to it in your newsreader, so that you can read the site as separate pieces of news, rather than a full-on website. I’m probably not explaining this well, so here’s a screenshot of NetNewsWire Lite for clarification.
Evan or Etan, if you have anything to add….
August 22nd, 2003 at 4:50 pm
Wow, that screenshot of NetNewsWire Lite is truly creepy. I would totally convince them to hire you, but I am a bit selfish and don’t want them to see you as being much more focussed and driven and then fire me. But no worries.. there are tons of similar jobs out there– some just involve you working longer hours than I do
and maybe have a few less benefits{{
–eocs
August 22nd, 2003 at 6:40 pm
Creepy? What about it is even remotely unsettling? Is it the sheer number of sites listed on the sidebar? Or the fact that this very entry is what’s being looked at? Eh, I don’t know.
Anyway, nobody wants to hire me because I don’t have the kind of experience they want – you know, degrees, familiarity with whatever Microsoft technology they’re pushing, etc. When I send out resumes, people don’t respond, so I never get a chance to show them how passionate and just downright nerdly I can be. Oh well.
If I had to work long hours, I’d shoot myself. How do you still have time to do your wizardry?
August 25th, 2003 at 12:51 pm
Yes, THAT is what creeps me out. I like to think that what I‘m seeing is the be all end all and that there is not intense control center or whatever that is, where you are sitting like a spider with many legs, manipulating us all with your deadly plans.
“nobody wants queixa”
Seriously though, I applied to hundreds of places and this is one of the 3 or so that got back to me, and only because of my headhunter. He is such a cool guy. You gotta just keep on trying, and never make excuses as to why people wouldn’t respond! It has nothing to do with you!! Many of them when you email it to jobs@suckycompany.com it just goes straight to nowheresville, population 0. So they didn’t reject you cuz they didn’t even see you. Keep plugging away and eventually you will laugh your way to a million bux.
As for the wizardry, when there’s a will, there’s a way. I want to make it so badly that I am willing to do things like spend all of my free time burning CDs, recording tracks and hitting open mics, plus spending mad money on all the goods. I don’t know where I will go, but I know that I am on my way for sure. You just gotta do it and don’t let anything get in your path. Plus the rush of applause, people coming up to me to buy my CDs and all the hot guys fawning over me help make it feel worth it. (in your case, ladies.. and believe me, they swoon when you sing)
best, eocs
August 25th, 2003 at 3:48 pm
The internet thats the thing that produces all that pr0n right?
August 26th, 2003 at 1:32 pm
Arthur gives good summary, especially about the iNterWEb. Since the horse is in the shop right now (goddamn MySQL tables!), I’ll add my two cents right here:
The idea of XML is really about the separation of content and presentation: HTML makes you spend way too much time marking things up with tags to make them look the way you want them to. It is much better for a whole bunch of reasons to mark the content up with tags that have interesting information about what that content actually IS. In Arthur’s example, these are the person, name etc. tags. So much better than a bunch of named div tags, or worse just h1 and h2 tags. If those tags don’t mean anything to you, then that’s exactly the point. They’re irrelevant to the content.
With XML presentation is governed by external style sheets, and those can be changed around or left out altogether, without changing the meaning or structure of the actual content. Hence the RSS feeds, which can be presented however a given newsfeed program wants to display them, without losing the distinction between title, author, and body copy.
The reason the migration to XML is essential is because of the expanding variety of devices we use to access the internet. Joe Phoneuser and Joe Desktopuser ought to be able to both get showtimes from moviefone.com, but just using HTML the poor moviefone guys have to make specialized sites for each type of device that might access their site. Using XML they can just change the style sheet or even let the device choose how to present it. It is so much better…
I’m not gonna get into Web Services; it’s an unpleasantly vague term, but all manner of good things are ostensibly coming from it. In any case, XML is dope enough all by its lonesome.