XML as a Hill

Related link: http://ptsefton.com/blog/

Really good analogy from Dr Peter Sefton, at a presentation in this week's Open Publish conference in Sydney. I enjoyed his presentation more than anyone others I saw, not the least because his laptop died minutes before starting, so he had to give the whole thing with a paper pad and acting out the photos. The presentation is now at Peter's
blog.

His point, basically, is that when you are cycling, a steep hill is bad, but then when you coast down hill after, things are easy. But if the hill is too steep, you go around and don' t make the climb at all.

Similarly, with XML conversion projects, if you decide to convert to be suitable for all possible multi-source conversion projects in the future, intended or not, you are setting yourself (and your markup people) such a hard task that it may be too much effort. Even though you know that you will be coasting afterwards.

I think Peter is suggesting that conversion projects should be staggered: do enough to meet your short-term requirements, and incrementally add value to the data as it is required. Maybe this is a variant of YAGNI?

Are you going to need it?