This is essentially ParAccel as a service. So it is one of those data warehouse vendors. As to the pricing, as always it isn't so straightforward -- it's $999 per TB a year if you pay $3,000 upfront, and then another $1000 for a single, very weak database server.
While so many key so strongly on the markup element of the name, XML is the structured markup of data into a document. Too many have some baggage that they think Markup means something like HTML, and document means English language text.
What this article is talking about is a bit facetious -- JSON seldom replaced XML, but instead was a greenfield choice for data packaging, where previously many used delimited or custom structured techniques. The single reason why JSON "wins" are ease of use, which is the same way that PHP and MySQL won. No one should confuse it with fitness for the task when really it's ease of getting started that defines its success.
You "feel their pain" by tracing through this entire sub-discussion, desperately clicking down-arrow along the way, and then adding some masturbatory, zero-content noise comment to try to cluck with the herd?
This is, without doubt, the Worst of Hacker News. My original post mentioned the truism that commenting was a crutch (which to a non-idiot doesn't mean that all commenting is bad, but that when someone is bad at writing or reading code they need to lean on comments in a negative fashion: No longer do they need to write clear, provable code, but instead can inject lots of comments that may or may not correlate with the reality reflected in the code (more often it does not). No longer do they need to understand what code does but instead can just hope and pray that it does something similar to the vague description at the outset).
Cue the chorus of hilarious quacks making their utterly stupid, Reddit-quality posts to try to sing with the chorus.
Give me a break. Declaring someone a troll is the banal hubris of the intellectually broken.
Intellectually lazy? That's a mighty big term for someone like you.
Further it's utterly astonishing that you would equate writing clear and non-ambiguous code rather than nebulous code of uncertain purpose -- like the example Chromium code you linked -- is "intellectual laziness". That you hold good coding as deficient compared to lazy commenting is hardly surprising given your comments.
Why do you think Chrome is eating Firefox's lunch?
Humorous given that both webkit and from that Chromium are largely comment free. What nonsense are you arguing again?
I've worked on FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and an assortment of smaller widely used software projects, including user-facing applications.
"Worked on" in HN parlance means "I did a coop term and wrote some test cases for some irrelevant little utility". Given your comical claims about Linux and Firefox re: Chrome, I have enough information about your skills.
Two projects that are enormous successes, both with more contributors than any code that you've ever touched, I would wager. "Messes". Indeed.
To your questions, while you're rhetorically asking, trying to wink to the crowd in the implication that the answers are telling, yes, actually I have. To very good effect. I'm speaking from actual experience here, not just the hilarious patter of the bottomfeeder that is far too typical on HN.
Do you have github/sourceforge? I'd love to read some of your non-trivial code.
Read almost any non-trivial successful project for good examples. The Linux kernel. Firefox. etc. The frequency and verbosity of comments tends to have a direct correlation with the simplicity of the code (which is the exact opposite of normal expectations).
Just to be clear, the person I responded said, in effect, that the code did X. They made code that did Y, and then realized it didn't do X. That is the story of a million ill conceived code rewrites.
That the code did X is clear by the code: No amount of words can refute or change that the code does X. The danger is replacing code is always in the behavior of the code, and never simplified descriptions of its actions.
To business logic, as someone who has worked heavily with business code for years (laughable commentary from imbeciles to the contrary), business logic in comments is one of the worst choices a team can make because it is an escape hatch. It negates the need for verbose, traceable code. It negates the need for vastly superior external proof.
I'll happily be "so brave" and reiterate a simple truism of software development -- comments are the battle cry of terrible developers.
They are the crutch of people who can't read code: "Add more comments because otherwise I can't make sense of what the statements are doing." It is the English speaker demanding that every French passage have an English translation, rather than simply learning French.
They are the crutch of people who can't write code. "My code is a gigantic, illiterate mess, so instead read the comment at the top that has no guarantee of being robust or accurate."
Bringing up mathematicians and Knuth are both irrelevant distractions. Software development in the modern world is a very structure, self-describing affair, or at least it should be. Comments are the short-circuit from having to figure out how to do that.
This is overly cynical. When people say "Why don't they just...", it is a sincere question, not a rhetorical statement. "Oh radiation...that makes sense". "Oh they had to bake the tech for 8 years". Etc.
Sidenote - "Why don't they just" shield the electronics rather than making the electronics itself radiation proof? I ask that knowing that there is a legitimate reason (shielding weight?), but it is something I have sincerely often wondered.
After the recent discussion about code-comments, that sort of code is exactly the sort that requires an explanatory comment.
If the code isn't the clearest comment you have, you're doing it wrong.
Comments are a crutch for people who write poor code. Comments have zero authority or guarantee of accuracy, and more often than not have little correlation with the actual code.