principles:postel_s_law
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Table of Contents
Postel's Law
Variants and Alternative Names
- General Principle of Robustness (not to be confused with Eric S. Raymond's Rule of Robustness)
Context
Principle Statement
“Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.”1)
Description
Rationale
Strategies
Origin
Evidence
Relations to Other Principles
Generalizations
Specializations
Contrary Principles
- Fail fast (FF): While FF is (amongst others) about checking for erroneous parameters, Postel's Law is about not being too strict with parameters. It says that the design should allow for uncommon or strangely arranged (yet meaningful) input data. This does not contradict FF as Postel's Law does not demand to process meaningless or erroneous data.
Complementary Principles
Principle Collections
Example
Description Status
Further Reading
- Jon Postel: Internet Protocol
- Martin Fowler: Tolerant Reader
- Joel Spolsky: A Hard Drill Makes an Easy Battle
- Eric S. Raymond: The Art of Unix Programming: Rule of Repair
1)
Jon Postel: RFC 761: Transmission Control Protocol
principles/postel_s_law.1634105747.txt.gz · Last modified: 2021-10-13 08:15 by 194.209.25.108