63 pointsby susam7 hours ago7 comments
  • rippeltippel34 minutes ago
    At this point, developers have named so many projects "Atom" that there are officially more Atoms in the world than there are atoms in the universe.
    • echelon32 minutes ago
      This one is (was) pretty important.

      The hyperscalers stopped that timeline from winning, though.

  • mplanchard6 hours ago
    I hand-rolled an atom feed for my statically generated blog. It’s a reasonable, easy format to work with.
  • drob5182 hours ago
    Well, that’s a blast from the past.
  • echelon33 minutes ago
    IIRC, Aaron Swartz was one of the contributors to the format. RIP.
  • intrasight6 hours ago
    First iteration of Google's APIs were atom. I do miss XML.
    • abustamam3 hours ago
      One of the API providers I use at work returns responses in XML and we use an XML parser to parse it to JSON and even then it's not perfect.

      What do you like about XML? I feel like I'm missing something.

      • deaddodo9 minutes ago
        The main benefit of XML over JSON is that it is structured, and can be associated with Schema's for built in validation.

        Obviously, that's only a benefit if you care about and utilize those features; most teams doing JSON integrations will just build those into the consumer in lieu of them being provided by the transport. But it is something that some people (especially larger enterprise organizations) value.

      • refulgentis2 hours ago
        I don't reach for it often but I've been around the block a bit, CC processors in the iPad point of sale I built circa 2010 used it and it seemed a bit off/unnecessary.

        In retrospect, its useful for creating islands of sanity/enforcement in a codebase. Lightweight way to give type annotations across organizational boundaries.

        > we use an XML parser to parse it to JSON and even then it's not perfect

        I can't quite picture this: how does one parse XML to JSON? I assume there's code that's parsing XML and returning a JSON object? What would make this not perfect, other than a poor implementation of the translator? Would them using JSON help? If JSON is a less expressive format than JSON, is it possible to 100% translate their XML to JSON?

        • abustamam26 minutes ago
          > useful for creating islands of sanity/enforcement in a codebase

          Thanks for the insight! Is this what JSDoc/Swagger is now used for?

          > I can't quite picture this: how does one parse XML to JSON?

          I'm not sure actually. I haven't personally seen the code, I just hear my coworkers always lambasting that API provider for their usage of XML. Maybe it's just their lack of documentation that sucks, but it's become a running joke whenever we get a new partner that the team integrating it jokes that their API is XML.

  • perrohunter6 hours ago
    what is old is new again?
    • hnlmorg6 hours ago
      No, this is just old.

      Pity though. RSS / Atom was a fantastic concept and it’s a real pity big tech killed them off.

      • rambambram5 hours ago
        Nothing is killed. It still exists, it's an open protocol after all. And I choose to use it, it's pretty fun to calmly follow around 2000 feeds from - mostly - blogs from HN. And cars... I need my car blogs.
        • holistio37 minutes ago
          Is there any platform for sharing what feeds we follow? Would love to discover some new blogs.
        • geodel5 hours ago
          Agreed. That nowadays people or even big companies find it outside their core competency to host their blog, have atom/RSS feeds is not because big tech killing it.
        • ushimitsudokian hour ago
          [dead]
      • bawolff3 hours ago
        Meh. Big tech didnt kill it off, it was already dead at that point. Sometimes things just arent popular no matter how much we might want it to be.
        • lolive2 hours ago
          Google Reader was uber popular at a time, then Google decided that syndication of articles, with comments, had to be an exclusive feature of their Facebook-esque Google+.
  • tkcranny6 hours ago
    [dead]