The Death of XSLT in Web Frameworks | Javalobby

The Death of XSLT in Web Frameworks | Javalobby: "The interesting point is: how the XML-based processing works in practice? The short answer is: very poor. And the weakest link in the whole chain is XSLT."

These are my comments on his 5 problems with XSLT:
1. Conditionals are a pain but are they common enough to be big to be a deal-killer?
2. Creating an extra variable occasionally isn’t a big deal.
3. Can be a pain.
4. Functional programming is different but it is gaining utility if large systems
5. I don't have enough experience with this to comment.

Some quick benefits of XSLT over JSP:
1. Push processing to client.
2. Reduce data sent to client
3. Depending on the data and HTML that needs to be applied, XSLT may be the best fit (just like JSP may be the best fit in other situations).

Some time spent learning the different ways of XSLT may have improved the experience. XSLT doesn't work in all cases (what language does) but I think its a little bit premature to claim it is dead. Not even languages that "nobody uses" like COBOL, assembly, and Fortran are dead.

It's Earth Day so change a light bulb and pat yourself on the back

First I think it is very important to conserve the Earth that God gave us and pass it on in good condition to our children.

But it bothers me when I see people promoting changing a few light-bulbs and commending people for doing that. The reason that it bothers me is because they don't show which actions are most effective (most bang for the buck) and try to promote the most effective methods. It seems that most people just want everyone to do some token action when if they really cared about the environment they would promote the most effective actions.

For example (from Google) an LED light bulb costs about $75 while using 22% of the energy of a regular bulb. Assuming the light is used 3 hours per day after a year that would save 42.7 KWH and 22 pounds of carbon (per PGE). It costs $3.41 per annual pound of carbon saved. Could that $75 have saved more carbon a different way?

$60 could buy 24 CFL bulbs (per Home Depot) and that would save 34 pounds of carbon per year (per PGE). That would cost $1.76 per annual pound of carbon saved. That's twice as effective as the LED bulb.

I'm sure there are more options that are even more effective so those who care should care enough to do the best they can with the resources available.

If I Were a Rich Man

Some friends did a spoof of "If a Were a Rich Man" from "Fiddler on the Roof" with a theme of the government bailouts.