XML and St. Patrick

So it happened that XML was on my mind on St. Patrick's Day this year. I was in MIT on March 17th. More on that some time over the next few weeks.

Anyway, in 2002 I wrote this piece for ITWorld about St. Patrick and XML. It is, I think it is apposite at the moment in our microformats/ json/rdfa-infused world.

St. Patrick to be Named Patron Saint of Software Developers
In a dramatic development, scholars working in Newgrange, Ireland, have deciphered an Ogham stone thought to have been carved by St. Patrick himself. The text on the stone predicts, with incredible accuracy, the trials-and-tribulations of IT professionals in the early 21st century. Calls are mounting for St. Patrick to be named the patron saint of Markup Technologists.

The full transcription of the Ogham stone is presented here for the first time:

DeXiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, accommodate the bizarre tag names and strange attribute naming conventions of others.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly, making liberal use of UML diagrams. Listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, they too have their story and won't shut up until you have heard it.

Avoid loud style sheets and aggressive time scales, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare your schemas with others, you will become vain and bitter for there will always be schemas greater and lesser than yours -- even if yours are auto-generated.

Enjoy the systems you ship as well as your plans for new ones. Keep interested in your own career, however humble. It's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time and Cobol may yet make a comeback.

Exercise caution in your use of namespaces for the world is full of namespace semantic trickery. Let this not blind you to what virtue there is in namespace-free markup. Many applications live quite happily without them.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign a working knowledge of RDF where no such knowledge exists. Neither be cynical about Relax NG; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment in the world of markup, James Clark is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth such as control over the authoring subsystems and any notion that you can dictate a directory structure for use by others.

Nurture strength of spirit to nourish you in sudden misfortune but do not distress yourself with dark imaginings of wholesale code re-writes.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. If you cannot make that XML document parse, go get a pizza and come back to it.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. Loosen your content models to help your code on its way, your boss will probably never notice.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and all other acyclic graphs; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with your code, however knotted it may be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your shelf of manuals. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, software development is a pretty cool thing to do with your head. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.