this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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The lost art of XML — mmagueta (marcosmagueta.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Kissaki@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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There exists a peculiar amnesia in software engineering regarding XML. Mention it in most circles and you will receive knowing smiles, dismissive waves, the sort of patronizing acknowledgment reserved for technologies deemed passé. "Oh, XML," they say, as if the very syllables carry the weight of obsolescence. "We use JSON now. Much cleaner."

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[–] lehenry@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

While I understand the critic about XPath and XSL, the fact that we have proper tools to query and tranform XML instead of the messy wat of getting specific information from JSON is also one of tge strong point of XML.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 day ago

XSLT and XPath are entirely underrated. They are seriously powerful tools.

While you can approximate XSLT with a heap of coffee and a JSON parser it's harder to keep it declarative.

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah, I wish I had something like XPath as consistently (in terms of availability and syntax) for JSON.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Has no one here heard of jq?

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

You do? jsonAta and JSONPath both exist and are very good.