- From: Wilbur Streett <WStreett@mail.monmouth.com>
- Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 08:58:00 -0400
- To: John Stracke <francis@ecal.com>
- Cc: http-wg@hplb.hpl.hp.com
At 01:57 PM 9/9/99 -0400, you wrote:
>> People? I thought that this was technology?
>
>So how do you build technology? At eCal, we get people to do it. :-)
>
>Seriously, though. Engineering is more than coming up with the best
>technology; it's also coming up with something that can be built by real
people
>with real, human failings. Protocols that are too complex for the people who
>need to implement them will lose out to simpler protocols, if only because
the
>implementations of the complex protocols will be buggy and late.
And designing protocols in order to work around implementation failures
means that the unnecessary complexity is added to the protocol, which then
leads to more implementation issues, and then more complexity is added in
the protocol to resolve implementation issues, ... and it spirals out of
control.
The reality is that elegance of design, (read, KISS), makes for a
technology that can be implemented, supported, and useful. HTTP wasn't
designed by Commitee, and was simple enough that everyone could implement
it. Hence, even with it's design flaws, it became popular.
The reality of technology acceptance curves being what they are, I don't
see much more progress on HTTP with the sort of design process and
decisions that occured with the Host Header.
Wilbur
--------------------------------------------
Putting A Human Face On Technology ;-)
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Literally! http://www.monmouth.com/~wstreett/FaceIT/
Received on Friday, 10 September 1999 05:59:27 UTC