> bloat of '00s enterprise XML

True, and it's even more sad that XML was originally just intended as a simplified subset of SGML (HTML's meta syntax with tag inference and other shortforms) for delivery of markup on the web and to evolve markup vocabularies and capabilities of browsers (of which only SVG and MathML made it). But when the web hype took over, W3C (MS) came up with SOAP, WS-this and WS-that, and a number of programming languages based on XML including XSLT (don't tell HNers it was originally Scheme but absolutely had to be XML just like JavaScript had to be named after Java; such was the madness).

I had done a couple of nontrivial projects with XSLT at the time and the problem with it is its lack of good mnemonics, discoverability from source code, and other ergonomics coupled with the fact that it's only used rarely so you find yourself basically relearning after having not used it for a couple of weeks. Template specifity matching is a particularly bad idea under those circumstances.

XSLT technically would make sense the more you're using large amounts of boilerplate XML literals in your template because it's using XML itself as language syntax. But even though using XML as language meta-syntax, it has lots of microsyntax ie XPath, variables, parameters that you need to cram into XML attributes with the usual quoting restrictions and lack of syntax highlighting. There's really nothing in XSLT that couldn't be implemtented better using a general-purpose language with proper testing and library infrastructure such as Prolog/Datalog (in fact, DSSSL, XSLT's close predecessor for templating full SGML/HTML and not just the XML subset, was based on Scheme) or just, you know, vanilla JavaScript which was introduced for DOM manipulation.

Note maintainance of libxml2/libxslt is currently understaffed [1], and it's a miracle to me XSLT (version v1.0 from 1999) is shipping as a native implementation in browsers still unlike eg. PDF.js.

[1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/issues/913

Yeah you've got a point. What's the lesser evil though when the alternative is overconfident over-motivated junior devs refactoring stuff for the sake of it while breaking apps, not realising their work should be to support the precious few FOSS desktop apps we have that won't come back with no new ones in sight either, leading us into know how monopolisation. That attitude is showing right here with Wayland apologists getting defensive as in nothing wrong with Wayland, it's just a new "platform" lol. Same thing with programming language fetishists which is just a means to an end. The problem is that the next generation of developers want to have their fun and educational experience reinventing stuff, too; and who wants to blame them when that's just what the previous gen did.

grug guy THINK big brain and make up hypermedia api and so complicated words like revealed religion but only in his imagination.

more important app is like how programmer intended. web only for docs like unix files anyway no good to think too much.

> Win32

My thoughts exactly given the progress wine/proton is making; pretty much the only success story for Linux on the mainstream "desktop" (handheld) for over ten years. Though I'm not sure about the underlying infrastructure of SteamOS (Arch-based) and/or Bazzite (fedora-based); could well be Wayland raising its ugly head there, and I just don't see a new generation of developers or sponsors willing to invest into it.