This, thirty years later, is the best pitch for XML I’ve read. Essentially, it’s a slow moving, standards-based approach to data interoperability.<p>I hated it the minute I learned about it, because it missed something I knew I cared about, but didn’t have a word for in the 90s - developer ergonomics. XML sucks shit for someone who wants to think tersely and code by hand. Seriously, I hate it with a fiery passion.<p>Happily to my mind the economics of easier-for-creators -> make web browsers and rendering engines either just DEAL with weird HTML, or else force people to use terse data specs like JSON won out. And we have a better and more interesting internet because of it.<p>However, I’m old enough now to appreciate there is a place for very long-standing standards in the data and data transformation space, and if the XML folks want to pick up that banner, I’m for it. I guess another way to say it is that XML has always seemed to be a data standard which is intended to be what <i>computers</i> prefer, not <i>people</i>. I’m old enough to welcome both, finally.