> (1) XSLT is a complete programming language, but doesn't support
>    most things most developers need to do.  (Graphics, networking,
>    relational database access, parsing HTTP headers, generating RSS
>    feeds, peer-to-peer networking, memory management & caching, thread
>    management, MIDI programming, the list goes on and on and on).

General-purpose programming languages also don't support those other
things, like talking to a database or sending email. There is no "send
email" or "update database" keyword/expression in Java/C#, you use the
language extensibility to accomplish those things, such as class
libraries. In XSLT you use extension functions/instructions, URI
resolvers, result document handlers, etc. You could do everything in
XSLT/XPath, you just need more libraries.
--
Max Toro



On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I recently saw the following assertions. Can you help me refute them
please:
>
> (1) XSLT is a complete programming language, but doesn't support
>    most things most developers need to do.  (Graphics, networking,
>    relational database access, parsing HTTP headers, generating RSS
>    feeds, peer-to-peer networking, memory management & caching, thread
>    management, MIDI programming, the list goes on and on and on).
>
> (2) Java (and others) were also designed to be enterprise-class programming
>    languages.  This means the assumption that many programmers will
collaborate
>    around a large project.  Encapsulation and complexity hiding are very
important.
>    A strongly typed, compiled language (not interpreted) is also important.
>    In short, XSLT wasn't designed for "programming in the large".
>
> /Roger