Re: [xml-dev] The Rise of Worse is Better

[Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au>]

XML actually started in awareness of Gabriel's theory: see for example
 1994 discussion at
  http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/text-processing/sgml/comp.text.sgml/1994/08
with Eric Naggum (+ Eliot Kimber, James Clark, David Megginson, Betty
Harvey, Paul Hermans, Len Bullard, etc).  The idea of Worse is Better
was quite well known, as a plausible way to think about SGML & HyTime.

If we take XML as the first generation, XPath/XSLT and Namespaces as
the second, then it was the third generation  of XSD that abandoned
Worse is Better.  Even with namespaces, I think default namespaces (in
order to bring HTML into namespaces using nominal DTD defaults)  were
an abandonment of Worse is Better.

(Note that Worse is Better is not minimalism or reductionism either.)

Garbriel is a really fun writer.

Cheers
Rick


On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 9:13 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
> Folks, Hello,
>
> I just read an interesting article titled, The Rise of Worse is Better.
>
>     The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable
>     to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right
>     thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are
>     hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing.
>
> I think this lesson applies to XML as well. Rather than developing a data model (e.g., XML Schema) that tries to do everything, create a simple data model that spreads like a virus and then take the time to improve it.
>
> More ... http://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
>
> Thoughts?
>
> /Roger
>
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