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Re: [Json] Nudging the English-language vs. formalisms discussion forward

Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> Wed, 19 February 2014 17:22 UTC

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Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:22:30 -0800
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From: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
To: Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam@gmail.com>
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Cc: Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org>, JSON WG <json@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: [Json] Nudging the English-language vs. formalisms discussion forward
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[pardon the mangled email. Blame my cat]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> The point is to focus the discussion on the data going over the wire
> rather than the syntax.
>

Here is where we disagree absolutely. The point is to specify the syntax
clearly and unambiguously, and the semantics of its payload.  Trying to
come at it from the other direction (specifying data structures and then
extracting syntax) leads to huge mistakes like CORBA and WS-*.

You go on to provide examples of badly-designed protocol syntax.  I don’t
think we have any disagreement that bad design is possible and should be
avoided.


>
>

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