Category: Formats & Standards

A fair comparison of XML and JSON: their data models, verbosity, schemas, and the real situations where each is the better choice.

What a UUID is, how its 128 bits are laid out into the 8-4-4-4-12 form, what the version and variant fields mean, and where UUIDs fit best.

Unicode assigns every character a code point; UTF-8 encodes those code points as bytes. How the two layers fit together, with a worked encoding example.

A practical style guide for readable SQL: keyword casing, indentation, where to break lines, comma placement, alias rules, and join clarity that hold up in review.

A practical guide to Markdown: headings, lists, links, code, tables and the whitespace rules that trip people up, plus how flavours differ.

A practical guide to JSONPath: how the syntax maps onto a JSON document, what each operator does, and the pitfalls to watch for.

What ISO 8601 actually specifies: the YYYY-MM-DD date, the T separator, the Z and offset suffixes, durations, and why it sorts and parses cleanly.

What JSON minification actually removes, how much it saves, when it helps, and when a pretty-printed file is the better choice.

How CSV escaping really works under RFC 4180: when to quote fields, how to escape quotes and newlines, and why parsers disagree.

Copy-ready cron examples for every N minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and business-hours schedules, plus the step and range tricks behind them.