Andy Dingley wrote:
> Haven't seen one. XSLT is _hard_

I don't think so, actually; it just requires a different approach than 
the programming languages folks are most familiar with. It's best to 
think of it in terms of pattern-matching ("whenever you see this, 
replace it with that") rather than procedural programming ("do this, 
then do that").

But, yes, it's a real programming language (I believe XSLT is 
turing-complete) and so you have to learn to work methodically and to 
break problems up into managable parts. You need to understand the 
concept of recursion, since as a single-assignment/functional language 
XSLT works in that mode in places where other languages would write 
loops. And there are some tasks where XSLT -- especially XSLT 1.0 -- 
really doesn't have an "obvious" solution and the fastest thing to do is 
to look at one of the XSLT Frequently Asked Questions documents to see 
how folks have solved similar problems in the past.

But nothing's going to make you an expert programmer overnight, in any 
language; seeing more examples helps, but it really needs practice.

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