...the general perl hacker's attitude about XML sucks.

Given how provocatively you state that, let me state my attitude and you can explain how my attitude sucks.

My attitude is that XML solves problems I don't have, doesn't solve problems I do have, and introduces new problems I didn't have. Therefore I don't use it.

First, how does it solve problems I don't have? Well I work with a lot of data which by nature is tabular. I don't need arbitrary nested data formats, and I don't roll my own format every 5 minutes. When I need to manipulate data it is in a relational database, when I need to exchange it, CSV is a self-documenting format which solves my needs, has been standard since before XML existed.

How doesn't it solve problems I do have?

• Throwing around buzzwords won't help when I have to handle data from someone who thinks that "prepaid in full" should be a new delinquency code when there is a perfectly good field present for the prepayment code.
• Saying that we will all agree on the name of something doesn't help when you have a linear process where the same dollars are called respectively interest, coupon, and wac. Said names having been established for centuries, they aren't going away because I hate working out the data mapping.
• Nothing will really help when companies like Microsoft decide that if http is considered safe by firewalls while new transportation protocols are not, then the right solution is to tunnel your data in a protocol built on http. All that SOAP is going to mean in the end is that firewalls will need to deconstruct the http protocol to distinguish safe from unsafe traffic and filter anyways. (A decision they will come to after people inevitably get burned.)

How does it create problems I didn't have?

• While it is a great dream that only valid XML tools will be certified, it is painful to use a valid tool and have to be the one to tell people that their handrolled tools to produce XML don't work. (Speaking of which is the "XML feed" that PerlMonks produces valid? It wasn't when I last checked, which was a while ago.)
• Of course there is a lot of truth to all of your comments about XML being overhyped, unwieldly, and too loaded with (almost) meaningless buzzwords.

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Unless I am mistaken, this is roughly the attitude that you think sucks. You think that it sucks that I don't want to use XML. You think that I should use XML because the rest of the world is going to use it. You think that it is my duty to make XML popular in Perl.

If so, then it is your attitude that sucks. If I look at a tool and see that there are a lot of costs and no real benefits for what I need to do, then I won't use it. The fact that everyone + dog is going to use a tool has no real weight with me - if I thought that way then I would use Windows, Java, and would be considering migrating to .NET. In short I believe that my attitude is good!

I maintain that it is attitudes like mine that helped my employer make a profit last year with strong sales of ongoing contracts. Even if we weren't continuing to sign up customers this year, we would make a profit just on ongoing revenue from existing contracts. Saying that I should become less productive as an advertisement for Perl's capabilities strikes me as very odd logic. My direct experience is that being productive with Perl has lead to lots of people around me having to learn it. And that means thinking about the costs and benefits of tools, and only using ones whose benefits exceed the costs.

If you want to convince Perl hackers people to use XML, telling us that our attitude sucks is the wrong approach. Don't say that there are lots of complex stuff in the XML world that Perl is good at. There is no point in saying that world + dog uses XML. As the phrase goes, managing open source developers is like herding cats. You need to convince the cats that from their point of view it is good to do what you want. For instance you can demonstrate that XML is fun. Or show how XML helps us easily solve our real problems.

PS I don't want Perl to be a Java or a C#. They aren't fun to work with, and if Perl tries to become them then I will go off and find something more interesting to do with my life.

UPDATE
Reorganized my complaints slightly.

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