May 27th, 2009

Before designing and implementing around an assumption, it helps to check that your assumption is true

When your component depends on another component in the project, and that other component is missing features you need, you have a few ways of resolving the situation. Most people would recommend working with the people responsible for the other component during the project planning phase and coming to some sort of understanding about what you require from them and when they might be able to provide it, if at all.

And then there’s this approach. This imaginary email conversation takes place about halfway through a project:

From: David Doe

Hello, widget team. I’m David Doe, from the doodad team.

Do widgets support cross-domain deserialization? If not, are there any plans to support it?

A reply quickly arrives from the head of the widget team, answering both of the questions.

From: Wendy Wilson

No, widgets do not currently support that feature, and there are no plans to add it.

The doodad team becomes a bit more concerned.

From: David Doe

This is really important to us. Doodads need to be able to deserialize widgets across domains, and we need to know when that support will be implemented.

Like the sign says, Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

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Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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