Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network Consider the situation in which several different centers are netted together, each center being highly individualistic and having its own special language and its own special way of doing things. Is it not desirable, or even necessary for all the centers to agree upon some language or, at least, upon some conventions for asking such questions as “What language do you speak?” At this extreme, the problem is essentially the one discussed by science fiction writers: “how do you get communications started among totally uncorrelated 'sapient' beings?.”
SHARED UNDERSTANDING AHEAD OF TIME 1 A component exposes an interface 2 Some humans write a lot of text to document it 3 Some other humans read it 4 And program another component to use the interface
SHARED UNDERSTANDING AHEAD OF TIME 1 EX PO SE IN TERFAC E W RITE D O C S REA D D O C S PRO G RA M C LIEN T 2 3 4 what happens when one of these changes?
PROBLEMS OF SHARED UNDERSTANDING AHEAD OF TIME • Error-prone • Brittle system • Tight-coupling, prohibits changes • Requires couple of iterations to get it right • Does not scale humans do errors versioning anyone? heard about broken clients? did clients use your API as expected? hire more programmers to write more docs
DOCUMENTATION ANATOMY • PROTOCOL DETAILS • AUTHENTICATION • PAGINATION • RATE LIMITING • HOW TO CONTACT LAWYERS • WHAT YOU THINK I WANT TO DO WITH YOUR API • DATA • WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH DATA
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics Just as there are odors that dogs can smell and we cannot, as well as sounds that dogs can hear and we cannot, so too there are wavelengths of light we cannot see and flavors we cannot taste. Why then, given our brains wired the way they are, does the remark, "Perhaps there are thoughts we cannot think," surprise you?
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