January, 24, 2002 archives

dave continues to be dead wrong about the value of idls for dynamic languages. perl's excellent SOAP::Lite contains specific support for wsdl, and i've already beaten the horse about my use of an idl in php. dave's alidl is a dud because it doesn't provide any type information.

the reason i rolled my own idl-based xml-rpc implementation for php is because coding for the usefulinc xml-rpc implementation is utterly gross. you end up writing verbose code to create the equivalent of what the idl gives you, and then your actual method implementation has to go through all sorts of grotty work to create values.

compare the non-idl method of writing the xml-rpc validation suite to the idl-driven method (plus the idl).

i have very little doubt that the use-case for writing client code would be any less compelling.

joel has written a follow up to his also-excellent "don't start over from scratch" piece.

i hate the word 'orientated'. you mean oriented, you ignorant fool. (runner up: 'depreciated,' when substituted for 'deprecated.')

todd solondz's new film storytelling sounds like a great film. part of the cast: american movie's mike schank. brilliant.

scientists cross pigs with spinach, and they're lower in saturated fat. i'm sure there's a ton of punchlines just waiting to be written about this.