4 ms·
From the page which the top comment from two years [1] ago linked to: "This statement is based upon a terrible misunderstand of Postel's robustness principle. I
by kutkloon7 9y ago
From the page which the top comment from two years [1] ago linked to:
"This statement is based upon a terrible misunderstand of Postel's robustness principle. I knew Jon Postel. He was quite unhappy with how his robustness principle was abused to cover up non-compliant behavior, and to criticize compliant software.
Jon's principle could perhaps be more accurately stated as 'In general, only a subset of a protocol is actually used in real life. So, you should be conservative and only generate that subset. However, you should also be liberal and accept everything that the protocol permits, even if it appears that nobody will ever use it.'"
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9827669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9827669
- whipoodle 9y agoInteresting! That is definitely different from how the maxim is commonly understood. Edit: actually, some of the replies in the thread you linked disagree with this remembrance, and state that it really did mean what we take it to mean today.
- jcranmer 9y agoThe citations for the replies don't really back it up. The context for the various iterations of Postel's Law generally suggest that they're referring to the possibility that you might be seeing the result of mismatching versions of a specification. The later iterations also give reference to an explicit example of what they mean: don't assume that enumerations in the specification are closed (i.e., assume that future revisions may add additional enumerations). There is absolutely no evidence that he is advocating trying to parse slop at all.