On Mon, 13 Dec 2021 20:31:23 +0000 Krixano <krixano@protonmail.com> wrote: > Do you just think constitutions are read literally without context? > What about the Bible? They are NOT. Thankfully I have little reason to implement software that interprets the Bible or any legal constitution in such a way that it shares its interpretation with other software. Metaphors like this are only confusing. It's simply not a valid comparison. A computer communication protocol gains from conformity and lack of ambiguity. A machine eventually needs to execute code according to the protocol, and a machine can't make a liberal but reasonable interpretation about what exactly inherently ambiguous concepts like freedom of speech or reverence entail. Laws and religious texts on the other hand gain from ambiguity and wealth of interpretation; they're to be both implemented and executed by humans who enjoy a luxury machines probably never will have. If I could feed into a machine the fact that Solderpunk thinks streaming response experiments are cool and interesting, and get an unambiguously correct implementation out of it, I would, but I can't. > Why? Because intention behind words matter. Solderpunk has given us a > ton of posts that detail his intention, so that in a case where there > is ambiguity or some disparity between the spec and what was intended, > we can actually know this by looking at what he wrote and what was > desired. As far as I'm concerned, until they're in the specification, they're just ponderings. Why should I have to care, as an implementor, about small experiments and loosely defined ideas? It's my opinion that if someone who has never visited the mailing list and who doesn't keep tabs on Solderpunk's other writing takes the specification and implements it exactly as written, they're correct. If their software then doesn't interoperate with other software implementing the protocol, either the other software or the specification is incorrect. Whether I, personally, can read it and consider its content with the context of having followed the mailing list or having followed some phlogs early on is irrelevant. My point is that no one who wants to implement the protocol should have to waste that time to achieve interoperability. > This is important because it tells us what in the spec needs > to be made more explicit. 100% agreed, because the specification is the canonical representation of the protocol. I wouldn't expect anyone to look further than the specification and the standards it refers to in order to learn how to implement the protocol. -- Philip
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