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Subject:Re: Giving up on XML From:"Susan Hogarth" <hogarth -at- gmail -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 14 Mar 2007 11:34:06 -0400
On 3/14/07, D. Michael McIntyre <michael -dot- mcintyre -at- rosegardenmusic -dot- com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 March 2007 2:01 am, Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
> > OTOH, it is possible that structured XML will become more
> > cost-affordable in the same way that websites did, as today's
> > junior high students learn to work in XML as part of the
> > process of writing home-brewed games so that we can hire
> > them as $10/hr interns to do the hands-on work of structuring.
>
> I wouldn't count on it. Today's junior high students are consumers, not
> producers. I know several of them personally, and I can't remotely picture a
> bunch of them crawling away from Runescape or Worlds of Warcraft or their
> favorite IM service or their cell phones long enough to do something like
> this. They don't know anything about how anything works, and don't want to
> learn.
That's the case with most people most of the time for most products.
Imagining it was different 'back in the day' is indulging in
unforgivable Springsteen-esque longing for a time that never existed.
In my opinion. But I'm right :)
You even seem to acknowledge this:
> ... Here I am, product of the days when
> most of the kids I knew didn't even have a tape recorder for their C64s. I
> eventually found my way to Linux, and got back to my own junior high days in
> spades. I started hacking on a world-class application that a bunch of us
> have been cobbling together in our spare time for years. ...
But NORMAL kids - as you pointed out - 'didn't even have a tape
recorder for their C64s'.
> ...
> I'm carrying the spirit of my own junior high days with me, and it is driving
> all of this. What will today's kids be doing in 20 years? Making even
> higher resolution pies with more realistic virtual fillings all day to earn
> fake money in a fake world?
SOME of those kids 'making pies' -will- end up 'cobbling together'
next decade's Bright And Shiny.
> Sadly, that seems more likely than any vision of the next generation that
> involves kids tinkering with XML in their back yards.
For most kids, sure. But just as you weren't 'most kids', some of them
won't be either.
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