[fatnoah]

> I started my career during peak XML crazy and while I liked parts of it at the time, the number of things it was used for was quite insane. I had to maintain a system once where a major part of it was XSLT, when could have just been a simple imperative algo with some config settings.

Same here. XML was going to save the world! Remember XML data islands with data embedded in page source and displayed via XSLT?

The craziest thing I had to build was a tool to manage the dozens to hundreds of XML configuration files that powered our product. The tool allowed editing and deploying the files, complete with validation and even input suggestion based on associated XSD for each XML file.

[mgr86]

I remember the XML is everywhere phase. The community that hasn't retired or passed on has largely come off of that. You can return JSON natively from XSLT 3.0 now. I've been on both sides of the love/hate fence with XML, but these days when I have the need to work with it I leave the projects really satisfied.

[wvenable]

The best part of the XML craze was the deprecation of proprietary binary file formats. I had to work with some software that was truly awful but since it saved it's data as XML,I could skip the software entirely and work directly with the data.

[ssdspoimdsjvv]

Nowadays you have the same type of tools, only for YAML. Not sure if that's so much better.

[pyuser583]

Which tools are you thinking of?

[ssdspoimdsjvv]

The Github actions editor for example.

[datavirtue]

YAML can die in a fire

[rezaprima]

I do just like this with json. Creating api blueprints.