My story ;

I was tinkering with XML in some project at work (as we all did back
in 2000 or so), and was increasingly getting frustrated (I initially
used a more colourful wording for this part) with the poor API choices
and ways to turn that XML into various forms that wasn't treating the
XML as strictly data-driven. Some smart person (no one seems to know
who) had heard some buzz-word "XSL", and as the guy at the GUI side of
things, I was made to look into it, and use it.

It has been one of the better choices thrusted upon me, not for the
success of that one project (although it went extremely well) but the
concepts that I was introduced to, especially functional and
declarative programming, but also concurrent concepts (SAX, mostly,
but also other sexy but less known methods), serious XML (like
understanding xml:id(s) for serious modeling, namespaces [and its
warts] and node-types and structures, especially)  and back-end
marshalling of resources through various pipes.

In many ways, XSLT made me a far better developer than any other
technology I've studied, except, perhaps Topic Maps, but then my first
open-source project and serious past-time project I ever did was an
XSLT Topic Maps engine and site creator, so both at the same time, at
least.

I think the resource I consulted the most through my first years were
Pawson et co and the XSL FAQ, and then came this here wonderful
mailing-list, plus Tennison's godlike pages and articles. Books came
later when I didn't need them any more, just as reference. Kay's first
XSLT book was the primary one.


Regards,

Alex
-- 
 Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
--- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ----------------------------------------------
------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---

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