Re: [Exist-open] "Beginner" user access, ramp up and documentation, thoughts and feelings

[<de...@in...>]

 On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:08:02 +0200, Adam Retter wrote:
>> XQuery is not XML syntax. It is not harder to learn than other
>> neo-functional languages (say scala or clojure) and I don't see much
>> of a difference to writing your application in something like PHP or
>> Python. XQuery just feels a bit more natural and straightforward 
>> when
>> it comes to XML processing.
>
> IMHO its MUCH MUCH easier to learn XQuery than Scala or Clojure.

 I am more of a Python guy myself (jython is fine too :)), but as long 
 as it is strongly but dynamically typed, "multi paradigm" with a decent 
 syntax and a decent library and rich base types I can deal with it. ;)

 I am sure XQuery and XPath and even XSLT can be very compact and 
 productive but in my own experience (limited and partial obviously) the 
 more declarative a language is the more I struggle to "debug" it when 
 something goes wrong, because a lot goes under the hood. Such languages, 
 for me, tend to need a much deeper investment to reap the full rewards 
 because you often need to be able to get the full underlying model into 
 your head to understand why you get what you get. And of course the 
 "human" is always wrong, but it can be hard to understand how, how much 
 and how far, wrong ;)

 And of course you have the "manager" factor, "we'll do it in java" ... 
 and such, so I appreciate the options and choices of usages and I dream 
 of being able to sneak a jython compiler somewhere ;)

 Thanks for all the answers and the welcoming.