Ryan Tomayko writes about the Zen of microformats; the whole post is worth reading, but I just have to explicitly point out this Mark Pilgrim quote:
Most standards go like this:
- Solve 80% of the problem in a matter of weeks.
- Spend two years arguing about the last 20%. (cough Atom cough)
- Implement the 80% in a matter of weeks. Wonder why everything is so hard.
- Spend months implementing the last 20%. Realize why the first 80% was so hard. Curse a lot.
- Discover that the last 20% wasn’t really worth all the time spent arguing about it or implementing it.
Microformats, on the other hand, go like this:
- Solve the 80% in a matter of weeks.
- Promise (wink wink) to tackle the 20% “later”.
- Implement the 80% in a matter of days.
- Watch people use it for a few months. Maybe tweak a little here and there.
- Discover that the last 20% wasn’t really necessary after all. Breathe a sigh of relief that you never bothered. Move on to the next problem.
He could just as well be talking about most software development projects ...
Especially about the one we both know pretty well. :-)