Is XML going to be around for awhile and is it worth learning?

Question

I am a second year web programmer and am looking for webmasters and other net programmers opinion of what languages will be important to pick up. Obviously any and all database/SQL languages... but in addition? How do you rate the following languages and their purposes?

C#
VB
Java
XML
HTML/XHTML
PERL
RUBY
PYTHON
PHP
ASP
(others?)

Answer 1

Okay, XML is so simple it's not really a programming language, it's actually a structural system, something so simple everybody does it everyday without even knowing. XML is the way of writing it so softwares will understand. By the way, there are no big difference between a database and an XML, lot of people consider XML a database and you can, from one or another, go back and forth from database to XML. By the way, html is a form of XML!

Quickly, I am a web programmer (applications, websites and CMSs) so in my opinion(context):

*/10

C# - 6/10

VB - 8/10

Java - 6/10

XML - 10/10

HTML - 10/10

PERL - 6/10

RUBY - 2/10 (that's dumb, you can do the same yourself without headaches)

Python - 4/10

PHP - 10/10

ASP - 9/10

AS - 9/10

CSS - 10/10

XSL - 8/10

SQL - 10/10



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Yes, XML will stay for awhile as it is a simple, extensible (scalable) model that is proven efficient. It's use might be marginalized in the coming years, but it will always be useful for inter-script communication...for example, PHP asks a database some data, the data is put into XML then sent back to PHP so it can loop through the values and do what it needs to.

Answer 2

Hi, it depends on your field of expertise, for example there are (arguably) two kinds of web programmers (or web developers), front and back end, meaning one deals mainly with the client side of a website or web service and uses mostly JS, CSS, (?)HTML, possibly java too for that, and the other writes software that runs on the server with technologies like Java, JavaScript (check out NodeJS), perl, php, asp...



XML is not a programming language and it most certainly is not a database. A database requires a database management system to read it, and that requires a certain set of features that XML alone does not implement (it would be like comparing Notepad to MySQL).

For web purposes XML is fading away in view of JSon, but it is still in strong use, so again, it depends on what are you working on. However XML is so incredibly use to use that you dont have to worry about learning it, chances are there's a library that converts your XML document into an array (try converting an entire database in an array...) so you dont have to do much work on it.



Then again if you are not developing web sites but web services your front end developer would most likely work on VB or any of the .Net family (unless your program is going to run on linux so then maybe wxWidgets => C++).



I've been working as a web developer related to web sites and information systems for over 6 years, in my every day work I use PHP, JS, CSS, MySQL/SQL oh yeah! MySql, PostgreSQL... they comply with the SQL standard, so you'd do well in paying attention to that instead of "learning MySQL" for example, sure enough there are additions in every DBMS but they all share a common root.



My advise, define your career path first, who knows and you may wind up working with Android or Objective C

Answer 3

Xml is going to be around forever. Html is a form of Xml. There is no reason why people will stop using it, it's data in a text format that humans can read, it supports pretty much any data you would want to store.



All of the technologies above are good, sans Ruby which is kind of silly.



You forgot C and C++!

Answer 4

I detest C#, VB, and ASP. It's not a matter of having something against Microsoft. The thing is that I'd like my stuff to be able to run on any server: Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc, and any server software: IIS, Apache, Nginx, etc. Those Microsoft languages will only run on Windows with IIS. No other choices.



I'd say that XML is more of a data format than a language. It's closer to SQL than any of the languages you've listed.



None of those languages is going to do you any good unless you know HTML.



After that, my top preference is PHP. I love Python as well, but it's more for local scripts and less for the web in my opinion.



As for the rest, well, let me point you to the best description I know of. It's meant to be humorous, but also has a lot of truth in it: http://blog.aegisub.org/2008/12/if-programming-languages-were-religions.html

Answer 5

XML will be around for a while. The X means extensible.

@Toby C# and VB run on linux fine. C# is an open standard ECMA approved language. Check out mono.

Answer 6

XML is actual no longer something you may "learn". that is no longer a programming language - only a set of concepts on the thanks to structure a knowledge record. quite, it shouldn't take more desirable than an hour to carry close the mandatory theory - no longer a lot attempt in any respect. yet definite, that's certainly valuable.

Answer 7

Top 3 I would focus on in order of importance (my opinion):

- HTML/XHTML ( XML is important for a lot of business-to-business transactions )

- PHP ( remember; FaceBook is written in PHP )

- JavaScript ( not on your list but should be )