[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Extreme Schema-building and Query-writing (was Re: [xml-de
5/2/03 1:51:29 PM, Mike Champion <mc@x...> wrote: >So, what's to be done? I don't pretend to have solid experience, but >maybe the ideas of "Extreme Programming" have a place here: figure out >the minimum amount of structure you MUST assume to be productive, get >constant feedback from the users to see if you are part of the solution >or part of the problem, and be ready to re-do it when things change, as >they inevitably will. Maybe ... focus on finding the appropriate level >of constraints (maybe on tag names) that remove more "noise" than >"signal", but don't obsess about finding just the right content mode for >all the elementsl; maybe use data types and validation where they really >matter (dates, money, measurement) but don't try to figure out universal >abstractions for things like addresses and phone numbers that vary >greatly and are going to be read by a human anyway; and think more about >extracting the information you need from the data people create than >trying to make people create data that fits your needs. I think a lot of what you and Spolsky are saying is that developers need to restrain their seemingly-natural tendency (especially if they come from math backgrounds) to place excessive weight on the *completeness* of systems. Completeness can be extremely important in theory, but that doesn't mean it's always all that important in practice. I think many developers naturally prefer broad, general systems that can be bent, with sufficient effort, to nearly any task over narrow systems that are well-adapted to particular tasks but can't be used for anything else. All other things being equal, that would be a rational preference, but the rub is that "with sufficient effort." I'm reminded of a quote from Peter Brown in his (now-ancient) book _Macro Processors and Techniques for Portable Software_: "The higher you fly in a balloon, the more towns you can see, but the longer it takes to land in any of them." And also of the observation that computer science and software development are two completely different fields (even though results from the former can inform the latter). There's no *theoretical* reason why we shouldn't do all our software development at the level of Turing-machine tuples; there are many *practical* reasons not to. -------- End of forwarded message --------
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