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   RE: [xml-dev] The Airplane Example (was Re: [xml-dev] Streaming X ML)

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And while we know most of this by rough experience, the 
following is fascinating reading relative to Ken's post.

http://www.tdan.com/i030hy01.htm

What does and doesn't work.   Worthy of some XML-Dev 
permathread amplification of worse-is-better, but really,
discovery based systems work better than deep C2.  The 
airplane starts out as a kite with an engine.  Then 
spiral development/evolution takes over.   As long as 
one can afford the knowledge maintenance, this keeps 
working.  At some point, gaps start to show up in the 
system because externalities (an economics term) begin 
to cause costs to rise (see the airline/union lawsuits) 
and then the system which is complex, therefore sensitive, 
begins to fail.   Eventually, a Saturn V would have blown 
up just as the Shuttle failed and other non-manned systems 
failed under the 'cheaper, faster, better' approach. 

Network effects are peculiar that way.

CoT chopped it down to just the essential bits.  That 
works for awhile, or at least, it gets enough networked 
nodes talking and doing useful work while the non-real time 
powers negotiate the more complex transactions.  It isn't 
that You Ain't Gonna Need It but You Ain't Gonna Need It First 
so Do What You Know Until You Are Sure of What You Don't Know. 

Then it is, what can you afford?   A very real reason for moving 
to markup even before XML was attempting to solve the complexity 
problems of maintaining large aggregate systems.  If the cost of 
the document system goes up with the cost of the system that it 
documents, you have a classic strongly linked cluster problem. 
For want of a nail, etc.

To answer Rick Marshall:  simplifying XML will be better than 
making it more complex.  But the costs haven't been justified. 
Just as some want to make it simpler, others such as Jakob Nielsen 
are discovering that linktypes could be better 
using all the tricks we knew 20 years ago before he started 
filing patents.   

The only question a poor man asks is 'who pays'?  If the 
network effect takes over, everyone does, eventually although 
the first mover pays the most.  But network effects usually 
don't happen for complex designs and that is the winnowing 
or Darwinian effect also known as churn.  It's a piece of 
cake to keep a 66 Beetle running if you can get the parts. 
It's not so easy to keep a IBM 360 series running even if 
you can get the parts.   That is, value is not only money; 
it is utility.

len


From: Bill de hOra [mailto:bill.dehora@propylon.com]

I'm with Karl and Len. I received a mechanical chronometer last year 
from my family. It's hands down the finest object I have ever had, and I 
fully expect it will outlast me. It serves a constant reminder about 
simplicity and robustness. Paul Graham said once that you can buy a more 
accurate and functionful modern watch for the fraction of the cost of a 
something like a mechanical chronometer. I think that's true, but it's 
also missing the point in some thing like the way meat market IT and 
tools-will-save-us arguments miss the point.




 

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