I am currently working on a project that requires some parsing and ‘scraping’ of information from my own web data, and I was pointed to Nokogiri as a place to begin. According to the site,
Nokogiri (鋸) is an HTML, XML, SAX, and Reader parser. Among Nokogiri’s many features is the ability to search documents via XPath or CSS3 selectors.
So far, right direction. The description continues:
XML is like violence – if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it.
Wait, what?
No, really, what?
Here’s a screenshot:
There is no other information as to why this is written in the description of what the code does. Interestingly, you can contribute to the code library at github.com/tenderlove/nokogiri –
notice the phrase: ‘tenderlove’
I’m thinking this is at the very least strange, definitely off-putting, and potentially points to a systemic ignorance about what violence is and what it does.
update: a bit more looking around gives me the original release of Nokogiri in 2008, on a site called- wait for it- ‘tender love making’ – the subtitle- “the act of making love, tenderly’
Read the article- <http://tenderlovemaking.com/2008/10/30/nokogiri-is-released/> for a weirdly code-erotic letter to the internets. Maybe this explains a few things?