xml-dev - RE: The problem with typography (with or without flow objects)

[Khun Yee Fung <KFung@extend.com>]

<quote by='Sebastian Rahtz'>
It seems to be a disease of the computer industry to rush things to
market. Who else would ever do this? Does your car have a ReadMe.First
document? your video player? It's hard to accept that a few weeks is
important in the life of a serious bit of software. Isnt it indicative
of firefight bugfixing?
</quote>

I don't think it is totally the computer industry's fault. When I was
working on a highly available telecom platform (>50 programmers and testers
at the peak, >$30 mil. lifetime, I think) seven years ago, the contract with
customers had penalty clauses for the quality of the system we built
(software and hardware). When I designed a highly available platform (~20
programmers and testers at the peak, $3 mil.) two years ago for a big
telecom alliance, they basically only cared about when we could deliver the
platform with acceptable quality (which was not spelt out, at least to us
low-life architects and programmers). Same industry, same customers, totally
different expectations since we began the Internet era.

What has this to do with XML? Well, last year, it took us one week to decide
to use XML for the biggest project (5 programmers and 2 testers, $3 mil.) we
got. In the old days, in my previous company, it took us more than one year
to decide to move from a proprietary protocol stack to OSI. In other words,
XML would not be adopted so quickly in the old cautious,
quality-or-be-fined, time, whatever merits it has.

Regards,
Khun Yee

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