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Re: [xsl] Re: Incrementing a Global variable


Subject: Re: [xsl] Re: Incrementing a Global variable
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:47:12 -0400

To add to Dimitre's high-level observation:

At 03:47 PM 8/27/2003, you wrote:
Anyone, who cannot get accustomed to the best feature of XSLT (its being a
functional language without side effects) will be far better off if they
stop torturing themselves with XSLT. XSLT requires a change in the way one
thinks -- if this change does not happen or takes too-long then we witness
requests for such "features".

Note also that "traditional" procedural or imperative programming also requires a change to the way one thinks -- it's not "natural" either. (It's just that if your brain underwent this change when you were fourteen years old, you might not remember it very well. I notice also that many people enjoy retooling their brains from time to time.)


In any case, XSLT apparently comes much more easily to learners who have not locked themselves into "procedure-think", in the mistaken belief that they know how it "should work", but instead just learn the language and how it *does* work.

To be fair, it also comes easier to those whose requirements for processing are closer to those for which the language was designed. We get simplicity and power right up front. But these days, some people are being thrown into the deep water and told to use XSLT for all kinds of things for which it isn't necessarily all that well suited. This includes various kinds of "up-transformation" ... "positional grouping" and all that, for which we have devised methods that work without necessarily being very straightforward. (We will see how well XSLT 2.0 addresses this "scope creep" in XSLT's mission.)

The ability to see where the boundaries are, and how to break a problem into the easy and tough parts for this peculiar technology, are higher-level skills that come only with experience.

Nonetheless, I agree with others that the solution is not to try to turn the language into something else. That would only make things worse.

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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