Plurrrr

When I started my career, XML was ubiquitous. The meta-information in a Java JAR file - the manifest - follows a proprietary format. But Java EE designers built it from the ground up on XML: meta-information of all artifacts is in XML format e.g. web.xml, ejb-jar.xml, application.xml, etc.

Java EE is one example I experienced personally. But XML was everywhere in the enterprise world at the time. Its prevalence manifested itself in two areas: configuration and data transfer.

Ever since then, it would be an euphemism to say XML has been losing in popularity. Other formats, such as JSON and YAML, have replaced it in the hearts of developers. In this post, I’d like to:

• Explore some of the reasons why the mighty XML has fallen
• Raise some downsides of the popular alternatives
• And describe how XML already solved those problems

We write so many functions in our programs that they become second nature before we know it. Like ants in a colony, they are numerous beyond imagination and they come together to form some surprisingly complex systems.

It begs the question: how do we write good functions? It can seem trivial: they’re just like ants after-all. But there is leverage in the answer: the right decisions multiply throughout your codebase and bubble up into great design.

I think there are about three key ideas you can employ to craft good functions. I wanted to share them with you.

A very short and dense tutorial for learning Haskell.