I've heard a lot of generalizations about software development lately. Here's an example:<p> <em>Developing software to create, navigate and manipulate XML data is a significant part of every developer’s job.</em><p> That's from the <a href=http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/ECMA-357.pdf>ECMAScript for XML</a> specification. <p> But.. it's not true.<p> Similar generalizations about how every program interacts with databases are also false.<p> There are classes of software where these things are integral, but there are also classes of software where they're irrelevant. If you're writing a game, for example, then XML processing is likely completely off the radar (unless you're talking about <a href=http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo2rss.ashx?i=186187&k=687246436>RSS publishing of game stats</a>, which isn't really part of the game anyway).<p> I wonder how a generalization like "Developing software to manipulate 2d and 3d vector graphics is a significant part of every developer's job" would go over?Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:17:08 GMT