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Re: Engineering versus Science, Anecdote versus Evidence... [W

• From: John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>
• To: Greg Hunt <greg@firmansyah.com>
• Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 09:53:33 -0500

Greg Hunt scripsit:

> The qualities of documents: their ease of understanding, the ease
> of writing the things, maximised simplicity, maximised performance,
> just general aesthetics, all seem to get lost at times when things
> are expected to just technically work.  Addressing this type of
> design madness through rules (an engineering approach) would require
> definition of all possible pathologies so that rules could be defined.

Actually, rules can and do tell people what to do as well as what not to
do, so things aren't quite that bad.

> The role of aesthetics in engineering seems to be less well understood
> than the role of aesthetics in the traditional sciences, but plugging
> into the aesthetics of what we do seems to be the simplest answer
> sometimes.

Indeed it is.  However, at the mundane level of style guides, Google
actually has a particularly fine style guide for the design of XML
documents which they grossly ignored in this case.  Bad, bad Google.

Disclaimer: I call it "particularly fine" because I wrote it, with
contributions from lots of people who were also at Google at the time.

http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/xmlstyle.html

-- 
"But I am the real Strider, fortunately,"       John Cowan
he said, looking down at them with his face     cowan@ccil.org
softened by a sudden smile.  "I am Aragorn son  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
of Arathorn, and if by life or death I can
save you, I will."  --LotR Book I Chapter 10

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Engineering versus Science, Anecdote versus Evidence... [Was: Designing an experiment to gather evidence on approaches todesigning web services]
    • From: Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>

• References:
  • Re: Engineering versus Science, Anecdote versus Evidence... [Was: Designing an experiment to gather evidence on approaches todesigning web services]
    • From: Tei <oscar.vives@gmail.com>
  • Re: Engineering versus Science, Anecdote versus Evidence... [Was: Designing an experiment to gather evidence on approaches todesigning web services]
    • From: Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>
  • Re: Engineering versus Science, Anecdote versus Evidence... [Was: Designing an experiment to gather evidence on approaches todesigning web services]
    • From: Greg Hunt <greg@firmansyah.com>