RE: infinite depth to namespaces

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 31 Aug 2001 10:40:14 -0700, Fuchs, Matthew wrote:
> Perhaps because there is often no single "best-practice" - I think I'd
> expect you of all people to realize that.  Often what is most important is
> there be consistent practice - the principle of least surprise, or something
> like that.  Consistency is often more important than optimality.

I think you must have a rather different understanding of "best
practices" from mine.  My understand of "best practices" isn't "optimal
way to do things" but rather "how best to avoid difficulties within the
context of a given specification set".  In that understanding, best
practice typically values consistency as much as (and frequently more
than) optimality.

Common XML [1], for instance, is a best practices document focused on
consistency rather than making optimal use of XML 1.0's features.

I had thought this usage of "best practices" was pretty ordinary in
computing (things like IETF Best Current Practice documents), but maybe
it's rarer than I'd thought.

I'd originally written:
> > Simple best-practice solutions are fairly easy to come up with, but
> > seemingly just as easy to shoot down, suggesting that there 
> > may never be
> > consensus on these issues.

[1] - http://simonstl.com/articles/cxmlspec.txt

Simon St.Laurent