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RE: SAX Filters for Namespace Processing

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Edd Dumbill <edd@u...>
• Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 09:16:29 -0500

Crazed mavericks?  Hardly.  There is a lot of 
experience there.  What is being pointed out 
is the simplifying assumptions come of the kind 
of experience one has.

The current incoherence in complexity comes 
of simplicity pushed to extremes without regard 
to known problems either because really unknown 
or because ignored.

You can't have it both ways.  Smart argues for 
as simple as possible given experience.   That 
is why nature gave you memory and humanity gave 
you libraries.  That way you know what will 
"possibly work".  Berners Lee threw away the 
same bits hypertext developers had been throwing 
away for the preceding decades, and upon discovering 
requirements in new situations, others put back.

And once again, we roar through the Moebus as 
if we were pioneers instead of sophomores.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Edd Dumbill [mailto:edd@u...]

> I think almost all of the cruft comes from lack of respect for 
> the 80/20 principle on which the Web itself is based. -Tim

I'm much in agreement with the general 80/20 thing, but I don't think we
can keep appealing to TimBL's invention of the web all the time, as if
this highly singular happening is reliably repeatable.

In my opinion we need to look behind the label that he ignored common
practice and take another view at what he did, picking out design
principles like some of those espoused by Extreme Programming.  The Web
seemed to be doing the simplest thing that would possibly work.

So while I bemoan those who are "following" TimBL by being ignorant
about existing work and research (I don't assert TimBL was ignorant,
maybe bright enough to know what he could throw away), I congratulate
those who follow minimalist design principles, which are not exclusive
with respecting and employing existing work.  

I think we possibly agree.

-- Edd

PS. Also another reflection: while it was possible to spawn the web via
such mechanisms, is the continued development of the web plausible in
such a way?  ie. now it is a widely deployed, it seems much harder as a
political process ever to get the 80/20 points we once had. so maybe
we're looking for some more benevolent one-offs driven by crazed
mavericks like Bosak, Bray, Clark & co...

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