It's also terribly opaque, and I'm afraid the community isn't very helpful. As a n00b I've worked with Apache, Bind, Python, bash, JavaScript, XSLT. None were harder to learn than XSLT. I've _used_ this tool, and it still takes me hours to figure out how sheets I've written actually work. The documentation is awful -- I have some of the community leading texts right here on my shelf, they are almost worse than useless. Appeals to various fora were as unhelpful as any I've made anywhere.
There's little point complaining about any of that, that community doesn't owe anything to me or anybody else. But after investing weeks learning that tool, I've moved on and use other stuff in places where XSLT should be the answer. And I'm by no means surprised to find other people expressing frustrations about the thing.
It's also terribly opaque, and I'm afraid the community isn't very helpful. As a n00b I've worked with Apache, Bind, Python, bash, JavaScript, XSLT. None were harder to learn than XSLT. I've _used_ this tool, and it still takes me hours to figure out how sheets I've written actually work. The documentation is awful -- I have some of the community leading texts right here on my shelf, they are almost worse than useless. Appeals to various fora were as unhelpful as any I've made anywhere.
There's little point complaining about any of that, that community doesn't owe anything to me or anybody else. But after investing weeks learning that tool, I've moved on and use other stuff in places where XSLT should be the answer. And I'm by no means surprised to find other people expressing frustrations about the thing.