Re: pls tell stories, be engaging, be brief

Dan proposed two stories, but I think the story of Project A is
unfinished.

>Project A did all their spec work assuming they'd
>do testing and QA later. The spec was finished
>in 9 months, but early adopters moaned and groaned
>about the ambiguities in the spec and the marketplace
>was rife with confusion. It wasn't until 3 years
>later that folks were motivated to develop a test
>suite. The technology was eventually deployed, because
>it was very much needed; but not gracefully at all.

Since each vendor of an early release resolved the ambiguities in
their own way, no vendor passed 100% of the (applicable) tests
when the test suite was finally released, and every vendor passed
some tests that nobody else did. Because each vendor felt they had
an established user base to placate, they did not change their
products to pass 100%. No fully-conformant product was *ever*
released for that spec.

Excuse my mood. I just finished reading some specs for Project C,
where so much variability is permitted that several quadrillion
different products can be developed, and all could claim to be
100% conformant.
.................David Marston

Received on Friday, 29 August 2003 11:30:47 UTC