[thelist] Re: Hn tags

Joel Canfield joel at spinhead.com
Fri Jun 28 02:00:01 CDT 2002


> >My contention, all other arguments aside, is that slavish
> adherence to
> >the rules *just because they're rules* is counterproductive.
>
> Not if the point is to have a standard way of structuring information.

Not what I said. Adherence to rules because they add value/order/whatever is
a good thing. Standards are a good thing. WaSP is my favorite thing on the
web. I love standards. I love that their site looks *great* on a Palm Pilot,
and they don't even have a Palm version; it's just that their site is coded
to standards.

But when the *standards* don't address a real life situation, which do you
do - ignore the real life situation, or ignore the standard? Now, when they
come up with a perfect standard *and* outlaw future growth, this situation
will never occur. Until then, we'll *always* have situations that don't fit
the standards. Not many, not often; but we'll have 'em. So, in *those*
cases, you do what makes *sense*, whether or not it's what the rules say.

Database design standards strongly imply that a database should be
normalized. But there are times when de-normalizing a database is exactly
the right thing to do. No dba worth his salt would forego the increased
performance because it wasn't 'standard.'

Don't get me wrong; I *like* rules. As I said (less verbosely) previously,
it's following the rules *without thinking* that I disagree with.

ThisRant.EOF

joel



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