FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

there is a certain mindset i've encountered before, one i'll call "RFC brained"

a "we have to go by the book even if no-one else is" to software—like where you adopt a protocol no-one speaks, but there's an RFC for it, so it's more technically correct

and the "x-header" stuff just feels like more of the same

there's a lot of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" stuff in protocols but nothing so apt as "we'll use x-foo for names"

still, this doesn't feel like one of those "programmers are bad at consequences of actions" things though, this feels more like a "technically correct" brained thing

one of those we must do the right thing even if it doesn't work moments

do you ever think about how, for years, we used X- or x- in front of experimental or yet to be standardized names, only then to find that the x- prefix had fossilised

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6648

In the 90s, two men invented a hallway. They weren't the first, but they made a simple and efficient design. There were signs and everything. you simply looked up what department of the building you wanted to go in, and followed the signs to get to the room you were going to.

This became huge, both in popularity + function, so the hallway became a whole company. and companies have to make money. To survive, they added shops along the way. a little garish but the signs were clear