You find them, particularly in places where XML is taken too seriously. Also in places staffed with people who see unmaintainable code as their ticket to job security.
One trouble is that you know there's a cliff out there. There are some simple tasks that can be done with an XSLT that's just beautiful. But try to change what it does, and you reach this point where it becomes incomprehensible.
Back in the day we used to wonder if XSLT was Turing complete -- some guys wrote a paper and proved it, but that's the problem with XSLT. If it takes computer scientists half a decade to figure out if it's Turing complete or not, it's completely incomprehensible.
One trouble is that you know there's a cliff out there. There are some simple tasks that can be done with an XSLT that's just beautiful. But try to change what it does, and you reach this point where it becomes incomprehensible.
Back in the day we used to wonder if XSLT was Turing complete -- some guys wrote a paper and proved it, but that's the problem with XSLT. If it takes computer scientists half a decade to figure out if it's Turing complete or not, it's completely incomprehensible.