{"id":23043,"date":"2008-03-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2008\/03\/21\/how-to-write-like-raymond-what-i-tell-you-three-times-is-true\/"},"modified":"2008-03-21T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T10:00:00","slug":"how-to-write-like-raymond-what-i-tell-you-three-times-is-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20080321-00\/?p=23043","title":{"rendered":"How to write like Raymond: What I tell you three times is true"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another installment in the extremely sporadic series on how to write like Raymond.\n On occasion, I’ll find myself engaged in a mail thread with a customer who refuses to believe what they’re being told and is under the impression that rephrasing the question will get a different answer.\n “My customer wants to control the name and appearance of the XYZ icon in the DEF dialog.”\n — There is no public interface for manipulating that icon.<\/i>\n “Can I change the icon’s appearance?”\n — There is no public interface for manipulating that icon.<\/i>\n At this point, I say to myself, “Two.” And there’s a nonzero chance that I will be rewarded with a third question:\n “What about in C++?”<\/p>\n

— What I tell you three times is true<\/a>. There is no public interface for manipulating that icon. <\/i> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another installment in the extremely sporadic series on how to write like Raymond. On occasion, I’ll find myself engaged in a mail thread with a customer who refuses to believe what they’re being told and is under the impression that rephrasing the question will get a different answer. “My customer wants to control the name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103,106],"class_list":["post-23043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer","tag-the-social-skills-of-a-thermonuclear-device"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Another installment in the extremely sporadic series on how to write like Raymond. On occasion, I’ll find myself engaged in a mail thread with a customer who refuses to believe what they’re being told and is under the impression that rephrasing the question will get a different answer. “My customer wants to control the name […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}