[lausobo]

author here. Thanks for your comment.

I clarified that "Sometimes" the causes are political, it used to say "Usually".

But if after a 30 minute read you picked up on a stupid example and you started a discussion on XML vs JSON you are just proving my point. The expectation in the 60s was that machines will figure out protocol, even make protocol, on the fly, by asking about each other. Yet, you want to have another discussion about XML and JSON.

[icebraining]

Machines do figure out the protocol on the fly by asking each other; see the Accept and Upgrade headers in HTTP, for example. Of course, HTTP is itself a protocol, because you can't "ask each other", or do any kind of communication at all, without a common protocol to start with.

As for making protocols on the fly, that makes roughly as much sense as two people inventing their own language to talk to each other.

[lausobo]

And of course, since it doesn't make sense to you, it is impossible.

Turns out that people invented their own language by talking to each other.

[icebraining]

I never said it was impossible.

[pjc50]

That was the great time of belief in "4GL". I think what we've learned from that is that the hard part is not so much implementing what we want, but making all the decisions. Coping with all the interacting possibilities and working out what we want in each case.