xml-dev - RE: What Clean Specs Achieve, WAS: Colonialism, SAX, Java, and Namespace

[peter@weblogic.com (Peter Seibel)]

At 09:53 AM 2/6/99 , you wrote:
>Bill la Forge wrote:
>> One of the big advantages of Java is that a small shop can
>> tackle significant projects. With clean specs, the same will
>> be true for XML.
>> 
>
>Hands up, who has read the Java spec (and that's not the same as reading
>the nice clear instructions given to you by the people who wrote the
>compiler)?

I don't know if that was rhetorical or not, but I have. Language Spec and
VM Spec. And I don't develop compilers or VMs for a living -- I'm just a
random Java hacker. FWIW, they are quite readable with most of the problems
of interpretation coming in places that were tacked on as part of the 1.1
release and not part of the spec proper. I'd encourage would-be spec
writers to read the language spec as a example of good spec writing. And
I'd encourage developers -- "average" or otherwise -- to read the specs of
the technologies they use on a daily basis. 

-Peter

-- 
Peter Seibel          Perl/Java/English Hacker      peter@weblogic.com

                     Is Windows98 Y2K compliant? 



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