XML and Emergent Simplicity[ITWorld.com]
As to the first question, I believe that XML could not have happened without SGML. If not for the groundwork laid by the SGML work, the map of the territory that it created, then XML would have contained a lot more mistakes. This seems to reference another fundamental rule of the universe that can be stated thus: Complexity is a necessary but not sufficient pre-cursor for the emergence of simplicity.
Three other examples of this law apart from SGML/XML spring to mind: C++ to Java, ISO Seven Layered Model to TCP/IP, and X.500 to LDAP. Interestingly, the metamorphosis from complex, niche standards to simple, pervasive standards seems to take about a decade or so. Perhaps the greatest progress in standards setting we could make would be reducing this incubation period.
One of the things I learned from my days as a mathematician, is that the first proof of anything is very complex. But after a few decades the proof can often be stripped down to a few paragraphs. Abstraction in mathematics is quite relative. What is quite well understood today was considered highly abstruse decades ago.
Posted by Doug Sauder at April 9, 2002 11:29 PM