I built the first popular sports "app" for the original iPhone, back when Jobs claimed that there was no need to write native code. The backend polled an API t

I built the first popular sports "app" for the original iPhone, back when Jobs claimed that there was no need to write native code. The backend polled an API that served XML updates on game scores etc. Note that I didn't previously know anything about baseball (and I still don't, not really). So let's say that a baseball team scores a Double. We'd see some XML like <doubles><double/><double/></doubles>. Now, suppose a team scores a tripple... You know that there's a <triples></triples> entity. What would you expect to see inside the node? If you're me, you'd expect to parse <triples><triple/><triple/></triples>. I got the call during dinner. There was an important game happening, and the app suddenly broke. People were uptight. They loved our app and they were complaining. In the end, it turns out that we would need to process <triples><double/><double/></triples>. Why? "Oh, it's always been that way." (Says the brusque developer at the service charging $50k/month for access to this feed.)