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Re: [lemonade] some questions in draft-ietf-lemonade-notifications-03
Randall Gellens writes:
> At 11:10 AM +0100 8/9/06, Ben Last wrote:
>> Sure, it's more complex from the OS's point of view, but that's
>> hidden from the programmer.
>
> I think it would be a mistake to make a protocol more complex and
> expensive simply because programmers can implement it by taking
> advantage of existing libraries and APIs. Good programmers
> understand, at least in general terms, what happens under the hood.
Another problem IMO is that it is quite rare for those "existing libraries and
APIs" to actually exist on all platforms of interest. And this is especially
true here, where we're supposed to be dealing with an even wider range of
devices than is perhaps the norm.
Let's please not forget the "diverse service endpoints" phrase that appears in
the title of this group.
Mind you, this doesn't mean we should attempt to cater to the vagarities of
devices that fail to either implement or provide access to basic lower layer
services like TCP, at least not in our standards-track work. There has to be a
nontrivial lowest common denominator in there somewhere.
So do bad programmers when there's a bug. Consider fixing something
which can be reproduced by doing x using server y and client z . A
fairly common task for the maintainers of y and z, ie. for everyone.
The very first step is necessarily protocol-level analysis, so all that
"hidden" complexity is uncovered right away.
Quite true. And when the problem actually turns out to be in one of those
libraries (as it does all too often) gettting it fixed can be a major
undertaking. Indeed, the situation in regards to library dependencies has
gotten so bad in some quarters I often hope for the issue to be in my own code,
because at least that way I can find and fix it.
Ned
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