Re: XHTML

>I _don't_ like this guy's thinking (who wrote the List Apart article, >not 
>you, Peter B.)...he's going to adjust within a year, or tank in a few 
>years, imho.

Don't think so <g>. We'll see...

>I've been programmer (non-web) for 19 years, and I believe that _anyone_ 
>who
>gets stuck in whatever particular coding style, and does not learn new
>standards, formats, etc., will end up with a stale brain and nowhere to go
>within 5 years of getting stuck.  This isn't an opinion, it's an 
>observation of
>past and current colleagues' habit's of work and their subsequent career
>progress.  Technology simply passes the stubborn stylist by.

All true, but I don't see XHTML as something truly new. At a purely 
practical level it is a slight upgrade of HTML syntax, which means that you 
can only make WWW pages with it. And I think the WWW will remain HTML based 
until its successor is born.

Browser makers cannot afford to produce an XHTML-requiring browser exactly 
*because* the WWW is HTML based at the moment. So new browsers will still 
understand HTML, which means that switching to XHTML is useless in practice.

As an intellectual exercise, as something to try purely for keeping your 
mind fresh, XHTML is too shallow and offers too little challenge for my 
taste.

Any successor to the WWW will be based on a truly new language we cannot yet 
envision, not on a slightly adjusted HTML variant.

>To protect your future, when you see a train a-comin', at least jump on and 
>ride
>for a few miles.  At the least, you'll have learned something new and kept 
>your
>mind exercised and fresh.  At the most, you'll by riding a really big train
>right to where you want to go.

I don't think that this train will get us anywhere, that's why I advise 
people not to worry about it. I may be completely wrong, but I haven't yet 
heard any argument that convinces me.

ppk
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