Hi Ned, at the end... On 01/15/2013 10:31 PM, ned+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Martin Rex wrote: > >> John Leslie wrote: >>> >>> I'm pretty darn uncomfortable _ever_ picking a fight with any >>> sitting AD, But I feel obligated to say this seems like a terrible >>> idea to me. >>> >>> As a background, I'm a long-time believer in "rough consensus" for >>> Proposed Standard and "running code" for advancement along the >>> standards track. I do not believe the two mix well. > >> I don't have the resource to participate the discussion, but >> these statements capture my opinion pretty well. > > I'm reluctantly going to have to join John and Martin, with one very important > difference: I think there is huge value in implementing specifications during > the process leading up to proposed standard. (As many people know, I do this > myself quite often for drafts I'm interested in.) I would rather phrase it as > having demonstrable interoperability for advancement, and ideally having > implementations done much earlier. > > More specifically, where I part ways with this draft is in believing that very > early implementation helps find interoperability issues. I have not found that > to be the case. What it helps find are issues affecting implementability. In > the applications area at least, it's surprisingly easy to specify things that > look good on paper but turn out to suck when you try to code them. (My own sins > in this area are well known - RFC 2231 - and one of the reasons for that it is > one of the few RFCs I've written without implementing it first.) > > Now, it's quite true that implementability problems can lead to > interoperability problems, like when different people take different shortcuts > in coding an unnecessarily problematic specification. But other outcomes are > possible, including fragility, unnecessary restrictions, and most especially > scalability problems. > > Another problem with focusing on interoperability specifically as opposed to > overall implementability is that it makes it hard to argue that one or two > implementations provide that much benefit. In my experience having just one > implementation, even one done by a draft author, is surprisingly helpful in > cleaning up drafts. > > I guess what I would like to see is for the draft to talk a little more about > finding implementation issues in general and a lot less about finding > interoperability issues specifically. I also think the draft goes a bit far in > the "carrots" it provides, but that may have more to do with my own experiences > in the applications area, where important comments have a way of only showing > up at the last second and where therefore the abbreviated process might be a > little dangerous to use. > > Finally, I'm going to apologize for the tardiness of this comment, which really > should have been made sooner. I'm also going to apologize in advance for > probably not being able to fully participate in this discussion due to severe > time constraints. Actually I think you make a couple of great points that ought be mentioned in the draft about implementability. (No chance you'd have time to craft a paragraph? If not, I'll try pinch text from above:-) Now that you point it out like that, I'm irritated at myself for not having included it already! (It rings bells for me.) Cheers, S. > > Ned > >