Path: text.usenetserver.com!out02b.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in02.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!postnews.google.com!a1g2000hsb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ed Prochak Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory Subject: Re: Postel's law Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 04:33:48 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 51 Message-ID: References: <038eff85-bfeb-41fb-8ed2-5849aa5376e7@v26g2000prm.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.54.145.254 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1212060829 6345 127.0.0.1 (29 May 2008 11:33:49 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:33:49 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: a1g2000hsb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=206.54.145.254; posting-account=3ty6FAkAAACYEfch20jQ1ZACFatw-Vdx User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: usenetserver.com comp.databases.theory:171619 X-Received-Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 07:33:49 EDT (text.usenetserver.com) On May 28, 9:55 am, Marshall wrote: > On May 28, 5:17 am, Ed Prochak wrote: > > > > > On May 23, 1:28 am, David BL wrote: > > > > Have you heard of Postel's Law? > > > > "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you > > > send." > > > > I can imagine it being applied to many things. Eg file formats, APIs, > > > compilers, databases ... > > > > I think it generally leads to unnecessary complexity and sweep errors > > > under the carpet. > > > > Comments? > > > I always understood this in the context of standards (ad hoc and > > otherwise) to mean essentially backward compatibility. > > Well, no, not really. Postel's law is applicable to protocols > that have only a single version. > > > The discussion about HTML is interesting, but I see problems with HTML > > as less of an issue as the compatibility problem of all the other > > browser issues with JAVA, Java script, and uncounted plug-ins. As > > broken as it is, HTML still mostly works. > > I think what we're talking about here, though, is the difference > between "mostly works" and "works." Did you read the link > Gene supplied? I did. I just thought the discussion was too limited to HTML. Especially since this is a group on database theory, not document format theory. > > On May 23, 10:21 pm, Gene Wirchenko wrote: > > Joel Spolsky said it well: > > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html Good article. Should we conclude this was a result of the law of unintended consequences? Or is HTML development an example of misapplying a rule (Postel's Law)? Something for comp.risks? Ed