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That "convoluted telco/ITU-T style" yields amazingly high quality specifications. I'll take X.68x / X.69x any day over most Internet RFCs (and I've written a n
by cryptonector 2y ago
That "convoluted telco/ITU-T style" yields amazingly high quality specifications. I'll take X.68x / X.69x any day over most Internet RFCs (and I've written a number of Internet RFCs). The ITU-T puts a great deal of effort into its specs, or at least the ASN.1 working group did.
ASN.1 is not that complicated. Pity that fools who thought ASN.1 was complicated re-invented the wheel quite poorly (Protocol Buffers I'm looking at you).
- quotemstr 2y agoFor our sins, our industry is doomed to suffer under unbearable weight of endless reinvented wheels. Of course it would have been better to stick with ASN.1. Of course we didn't, because inexperience and hubris. We'll never learn.
- cryptonector 2y agoIt sure seems that way. Sad. It's not just hubris nor inexperience -- it's cognitive load. It's often easier to wing something that later grows a lot than it is to go find a suitable technology that already exists.
- jabl 2y agoOne thing I liked about a Vernor Vinge sci-fi novel I read once was the concept of "computer archeologist". Spool the evolution of software forwards a few centuries, and we'll have layers upon layers of software where instead of solving problems with existing tooling, we just plaster on yet another NIH layer. Rinse and repeat, and soon enough we'll need a separate profession of people who are capable of digging down into those old layers and figure out how they work.