Re: The first five minutes ... and the next 50,0000 minutes

On 17 February 2014 15:43, Christopher.R.Ball
<christopher.r.ball@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately . . . I would have to disagree - strongly that this is just a
> "first five minutes" problem.

agreed, see other responses.

> In my own case, xProc lost a quarter of my own development team at 500
> minutes, another quarter at 5,000 minutes and the remaining die-hards at
> 50,000 minutes!

for lack of a better term .... that is an interesting 'data point'

> To be clear, these are different issues:
>
>     A) the first type of loss (at 5 minutes or 500 minutes) is due to the
> "*significant barrier to comprehension**"
> **
> *    B) the second type of loss (at 50,000 minutes) is due to an
> "*inelegance*" of the language. In other words, a lack of tight consistent
> use of semantics and features that should provide simplicity and power.
>
> When a language suffers from "type A", people are slow to adopt it. But when
> a language suffers from "type B", the few endure the learning curve abandon
> it as a poor investment of time.
>
> My own development team definitely found we were better off crafting our own
> solution than suffering through a longer term investment in xProc. I wrote
> about my teams experience just before last years XML Prague
> (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xproc-dev/2013Feb/0005.html). One

to make sure we didn't drop the (proverbial) Ball .... reviewing that
thread, Norm Walsh did reply to you in concrete detail and I can't see
any follow up conversation ... perhaps by that time your frustration
levels led you to decide not to follow up ?

I know its unlikely but I do hope that you give XProc another chance
and participate in vnext.

thx, Jim Fuller

Received on Tuesday, 18 February 2014 11:52:20 UTC