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Re: It is okay for things to break in the future!

• From: Damian Morris <damian@moso.com.au>
• To: Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>, Roger L Costello<costello@m...>
• Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2022 23:09:47 +0000

An important clarification on the “I Guess Everyone’s Perspective”: it’s possible to model the world, but not so accurately that validations that are likely to break the model - and these kinds of validation are far more common than most people first assume. 

In other words, our models are far more approximate than we would like to think they are. 

By all means model the world - after all, that is essentially what we all do for a living - but be aware that our models are just that, and don’t make our models inflexible, and thus brittle. Make them as generous as it is possible to make them whilst still making them useful models for whatever our purposes are.

So instead of making an inflexible, and thus brittle model, and thus an inflexible and thus brittle ecosystem, make the model generous and build a robust, fault-tolerant ecosystem that does not break when it gets unexpected data.

One thing we’ve learnt in the past 20 years (or nearly 40, if you remember the Morris worm, etc) is that f you don’t design and build your ecosystem to be able to intelligently handle unexpected data then you are designing and building in security vulnerabilities, never mind limitations on the ecosystem’s usefulness.

Cheers,

Damian


> On 5 Sep 2022, at 8:31 am, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:
> 
> Maybe spend a while with Walter Perry, or at least his older posts?  He was repeating "I Guess Everyone Else's Perspective" from the beginning here.  Though not precisely that it's not possible to model the world so much as it's not possible to share models of the world.
> 
> Thanks,
> Simon
> 
> On 9/4/2022 6:11 PM, Roger L Costello wrote:
>> Damian provides an excellent summary of the two perspectives.
>> 
>> Here is a slight revision of Damian's summary:
>> 
>> Roger's Perspective: It is possible to know the current world. Developers can and should model the current world. The benefits of flagging data that violates the model outweighs the benefits of "coding for the future."
>> 
>> I Guess Everyone Else's Perspective: It is not possible to model the world. Even in incredibly simple ways. The costs of breaking the model when the world doesn’t agree with the model outweighs the benefits of flagging invalid data.
>> 
>> /Roger
> 
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• References:
  • Re: It is okay for things to break in the future!
    • From: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>
  • Re: It is okay for things to break in the future!
    • From: "Liam R. E. Quin" <liam@fromoldbooks.org>
  • Re: It is okay for things to break in the future!
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: It is okay for things to break in the future!
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: It is okay for things to break in the future!
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: It is okay for things to break in the future!
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>