Re:Should we remove XSLT from the web platform?
by ethan_smith on Friday August 15, 2025 @04:52AM
(#44910048)
XSLT adds ~100k lines of specialized code to browser engines with near-zero telemetry usage (<0.01% of page loads), making it a prime example of the maintenance burden vs. utility problem you're describing.
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Re:Should we remove XSLT from the web platform?
by geocar on Monday August 18, 2025 @05:18AM
(#44938747)
> near-zero telemetry usage (<0.01% of page loads),
Perhaps without realising it, you are still describing numbers in the hundreds of millions perhaps billions, which isn't even close to zero when you're talking about atoms:
Google does 200$ billion USD in annual ad revenue: At even a mere $1 CPM that's 200 trillion impressions a year.
They put 5 ads on every page and we're at 40 trillion page loads a year that Google knows about.
You tell me that even 0.001% of that is XML/XSLT and we're still talking hundreds of millions of page loads every year.
And that's just the ones Google knows about: Pages without Google ads like say https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/hr3617/BILLS-117hr3617ih.... should definitely not be included in that telemetry at all, indicating the value should be much higher