
The Harmful Consequences of Postel's Maxim - golangnews
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomson-postel-was-wrong-00
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MichaelGG
Look at HTTP. How many implementations correctly and interoperably handle line
folding? Comments in headers? Different line endings? Stick to a small subset
and you're fine. Actually use the spec as written and it is hopeless. These
crazy semi-freeform text protocols are a curse. They do not make
implementation easier. They trick people into thinking they made it easier.

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gumby
A physical world example is USB Type C: you may have a high-speed Thunderbolt
drive and a high-speed Thunderbolt computer, but you may unwittingly use a
cable that doesn’t support that (though it may even support some other high-
speed protocol) so the whole apparatus will silently fall back to a very slow
rate without informing the user. No problem for you and me, but possibly a
problem for some unfortunate user.

Since none of the cables or ports are visibly labeled with their capabilities
you have to know what you’re doing.

~~~
hdhzy
> Since none of the cables or ports are visibly labeled with their
> capabilities you have to know what you’re doing.

I don't know about all of them but my cables and ports have visible
Thunderbolt logo (small thunder symbol).

~~~
gumby
Your Type C ports and cables? What machines and where do you get your cables?

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hdhzy
Dell XPS 9350 has one Thunderbolt port [0] and Dell Thunderbolt Dock TB16 has
attached Thunderbolt cable [1]. I agree it's not a big, representative sample
but still...

[0]: [http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/dell-
xp...](http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/dell-
xps-13_9350_13.jpg)

[1]: [https://i1.wp.com/geardiary.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/02/d...](https://i1.wp.com/geardiary.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/02/dell-thunderbolt-dock-
tb16-MO-3.jpg?resize=750%2C457&ssl=1)

~~~
gumby
That is excellent. If only more vendors (I'm looking at you in particular,
Apple) would do this.

The USB ss logo is absurd (not Dell's fault). Nobody knows what all those
almost-identical names for different kinds of USB mean.

~~~
hdhzy
> If only more vendors (I'm looking at you in particular, Apple) would do
> this.

I'm not really using Apple cables but a quick search shows that this adapter
[0] has a small Thunderbolt logo on the USB-C connector.

[0]:
[https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-u...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-
c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter?fnode=8b)

> The USB ss logo is absurd (not Dell's fault). Nobody knows what all those
> almost-identical names for different kinds of USB mean.

I agree. To one-up this on the other side of that laptop [1] is a USB
PowerShare port with even more elaborate logo. It's just... super confusing.

[1]: [https://geardiary.com/2016/03/07/charging-usb-devices-
with-y...](https://geardiary.com/2016/03/07/charging-usb-devices-with-your-
dell-powered-off/)

------
voiper1
I know the FOSS FreeSWITCH VoIP b2bua has a TON of "hacks" to "Be liberal in
what you accept" which is a mess of things to support, to clean up after the
commercial entities that don't follow SIP specs.

e.g. SONUS information:
[https://freeswitch.org/confluence/display/FREESWITCH/RTP+Iss...](https://freeswitch.org/confluence/display/FREESWITCH/RTP+Issues)

