February 23, 2009 – 16:37
Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.
- Postel’s Prescription
Previous posts here have discussed reducing the burden of data entry on your application’s users by cutting down on the number of items that they are required to provide and, even if something is required, allowing it to remain incomplete for as [...]
February 11, 2009 – 16:19
If you’re developing or deploying software, then it should have a purpose. Unless you’re doing cutting-edge research, then that purpose is probably not to provide a tech demo, nor to show off how many buzzword-laden features you can pack into it…
Never test for an error condition you don’t know how to handle.
- Steinbach
Steinbach’s guideline is a well-known maxim in the tech world, but I have a variation on it which is at least as important (and much more serious):
Never report an error condition you don’t know how to describe.
There was a time when we had [...]
In Minimize Data Requirements, I talked a bit about allowing users to save incomplete data because there’s no reason to insist that all data must be provided before any of it is accepted.
While that may be a good negative reason (”there’s no reason not to”), there are also positive reasons for allowing this:
It makes your [...]
There’s a long-standing tendency for software to enforce completeness and consistency in stored data. It has never truly been necessary in the real world and it has become something of a monster with the rise of the internet as websites seem to be constantly outdoing each other to collect every conceivable piece of information [...]
(10)
