this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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Programming

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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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[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Skimming through the post, the code snippet about halfway through picked my attention. Been a while since I studied site development, but that snippet looks awfully like HTML. Are it and XML related?

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

They're siblings. They both derive from SGML. There is a version of HTML that is also XML conformant called XHTML but it never caught on...

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes. Arguably, HTML is a form of XML. Also, the ML means the same in both. XML tools can often also be used to query HTML documents.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 3 points 1 day ago

Ooooh~

Thanks for the explanation!

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

There was a time where HTML moved towards a more formalized XML-valid definition named XHTML. Ultimately, web/browser backwards compatibility and messy and forgiving nature lead to us giving up on that and now we have the HTML living standard with rules, but browsers (not sure to what degree it's standardized or not) are very forgiving in their interpretation.

While HTML, prior to HTML5, was defined as an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a flexible markup language framework, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. XHTML documents are well-formed and may therefore be parsed using standard XML parsers, unlike HTML, which requires a lenient, HTML-specific parser.[1]

XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation on 26 January 2000. XHTML 1.1 became a W3C recommendation on 31 May 2001. XHTML is now referred to as "the XML syntax for HTML"[2][3] and being developed as an XML adaptation of the HTML living standard.[4][5]

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

But nobody uses it anymore and uses a js-framework on a page instead. Which only 3 billion-dollar engines in the world can render.