Re: Mono bindings a blessed dependency? [Was: Tomboy in 2.16]

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

Hi Shaun,

On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 12:38 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:

> On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 18:26 +0200, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 17:15 +0100, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> > >  We need namespaces/classes for metadata as raw DC is 
> > > not appropriate and hierarchical rdf types are very inelegant (and 
> > > unmanageable in tracker's DB).
> > 
> > You are making a common mistake - I did that too, so a word of advice:
> > you don't write the spec to adapt it to the implementation; it's really
> > the other way around. Otherwise, you'll have the perfect implementation,
> > but other will have to pass through hell.  Remember that fixing a bad
> > implementation is simple - fixing a bad spec is really not.
> > 
> > You must design the spec *without* the implementation in mind.  It's
> > harder: yes.  It creates a *useful* spec: yes.
> 

> Specifications without reference implementations suck.

This we agree: a reference implementation must be done in parallel with
the spec design.  Also, avoiding spec design by committee is a plus.

But, as you say:

> If I ran a standards body, I would demand
> two distinct and interoperable reference implementations and a
> complete set of conformance tests before I'd ever let anything
> be called a standard.

This means that the spec must not be designed by the implementation.

Otherwise every whim of a library, or a language, used by the
implementation will end up in the spec itself.  What if I change the
dependency chain or the language: does this make the spec's
implementation-induced limitations disappear, thus breaking every other
implementation?

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi - <ebassi gmail com>
Log: http://log.emmanuelebassi.net