Re: [xml-dev] How to be nimble, agile in the face of changingtechnologie

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Costello, Roger L. scripsit:

> John, do you have a reference for this, that shows the numbers you cite?

Not that I can easily lay my hands on.  You could ask Tim.

Poking about on the C2 wiki, I find an anecdote of someone doing i18n
in a well-factored English-only algorithm with very little work.  However,
I bet he was not using a "bytes=characters" language like C.

> > This is a specific case of a more general point ...
> 
> Again, it would be awesome to have a reference for this. Is this a
> documented principle that you are describing?

There's plenty of talk about it in C2 and other XP sources: search for
[YAGNI counterexamples].

> > it is always simplest to hard-code all assumptions, but 
> > it *will* force redesign further down the line, and the 
> > more assumptions, the more redesign.  
> 
> In the case of the discussion at hand, the assumption is what? Is it
> the following? Assumption: The larger XML community will always use
> XML Schema so just create data models using XML Schema.

Something like that.

Petite Abeille scripsit:

> And what's wrong with redesign? After all, we are dealing with software,
> which, by its very nature, is infinitely malleable.

Change is not free.  XP advocates claim that if the rest of their
methods are followed, it costs no more to make a change later than to
make it now; my view of this claim is that "all theory is for it, but
all experience is against it."

In addition, not all software is malleable.  The extreme case is software
in ROM, which is not malleable except by buying a new device.  Short of that,
there is commercial software where customers are charged to upgrade, which
might as well be in ROM.  It's common enough for programs never to be upgraded
until a new PC with new software is bought.

-- 
I now introduce Professor Smullyan,             John Cowan
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