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Philip Linde linde.philip at gmail.com
Mon Dec 13 23:17:12 GMT 2021
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On Mon, 13 Dec 2021 20:31:23 +0000Krixano <krixano at 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 interpretsthe Bible or any legal constitution in such a way that it shares itsinterpretation with other software. Metaphors like this are onlyconfusing. It's simply not a valid comparison. A computer communicationprotocol gains from conformity and lack of ambiguity. A machineeventually needs to execute code according to the protocol, and amachine can't make a liberal but reasonable interpretation aboutwhat exactly inherently ambiguous concepts like freedom of speech orreverence entail. Laws and religious texts on the other hand gain fromambiguity and wealth of interpretation; they're to be both implementedand executed by humans who enjoy a luxury machines probably never willhave.
If I could feed into a machine the fact that Solderpunk thinksstreaming response experiments are cool and interesting, and get anunambiguously 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'rejust ponderings. Why should I have to care, as an implementor, aboutsmall experiments and loosely defined ideas?
It's my opinion that if someone who has never visited the mailinglist and who doesn't keep tabs on Solderpunk's other writing takes thespecification and implements it exactly as written, they're correct. Iftheir software then doesn't interoperate with other softwareimplementing the protocol, either the other software or thespecification is incorrect.
Whether I, personally, can read it and consider its content with thecontext of having followed the mailing list or having followed somephlogs early on is irrelevant. My point is that no one who wants toimplement the protocol should have to waste that time to achieveinteroperability.
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 representationof the protocol. I wouldn't expect anyone to look further than thespecification and the standards it refers to in order to learn how toimplement the protocol.
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