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  • To: "'ari@c...'" <ari@c...>, Rick Jelliffe <ricko@a...>
  • Subject: RE: On the promotion and demotion of information items (was Re: RE: Take 2 - How do you replace comments from XML?)
  • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 09:14:10 -0600
  • Cc: xml-dev@l...

I still see data dictionary entries with so-called, reserved for future use, 
fields.  It usually means the designer had a clever notion and then decided 
it was YAGNI for now, or ran out of time.  Maybe it is a habit like being 
a pack rat and never throwing away anything that could *possibly* be useful. 
They also document the obsolete fields.  Why?  The conversion folks get lost 
otherwise.

The neanderthal lives on in all of us.

len

From: ari@c... [mailto:ari@c...]

As long as Len is going on his Neanderthal nostalgia, I might mention
that when I programmed for a certain government entity, and they used
fixed record-length files (don't ask), the requirement was to allocate
so many bytes at the end of each structure one designed for a field
that had to be called FFU. For Future Use.

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