Re: Procedural (non-technical) point about freezing the cat and hat combinators before they've even been defined (was Re: Shadow DOM: Hat and Cat -- if that's your real name.)

* Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>Do you understand the difference between "we refuse to change" and "we
>suspect certain things will get difficult to change rather quickly,
>because that's how the web works"?
>
>Attributing an ultimatum to my words is blatantly violating the
>Principle of Charity, especially since I've *very explicitly*
>clarified that I'm talking about the latter.
>
>I don't like contributing to a conversation that perpetually
>misinterprets my words and attributes malice to me and my team. :/

Shipping Shadow DOM in Google Chrome right now would deprive people of
their right to contribute to the design of Shadow DOM by participating
in the W3C Process and their associated rights. Depriving people of
their rights is a malicious act and bad citizenship.

>No matter how good you think you did, people will point out fundamental
>failures a week after you've shipped that make you wonder how you were
>ever so dumb.

Yes, you see the connection. First you deprive people of their chance
to point out fundamental failures before you ship, and then you ship
with fundamental failures only those people are able to recognise.

The solution is to insist on the right of the people to affect what
affects them. And I note that it's primarily people other than browser
developers who suffer when browser developers make bad decisions.

I've been playing this broken record for 15 years now precisely because
"shipping" with design and specification failures in the vast majority
of cases can easily be avoided by reviews of properly crafted proposals.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Wednesday, 5 February 2014 17:54:17 UTC