[wp-hackers] A "terms" table

[Steve Lewis]

On 4/15/07, Matt Mullenweg <m at mullenweg.com> wrote:
> I cover plugin authors specifically in my original email on this thread.

Fine.
[reviewing]

3. There should be no user- or plugin-facing problems with how it's
> currently implemented, or if we decide to change it.


To answer that, I have to throw another of your own quotes back at you:

> Historically we've found that the things that are actual issues are very
> different from the things we've anticipated to be issues. I don't think
> this is unique to us, but is a general tenet of software design and
> development in general.

You can say that plugin authors "shouldn't" need to perform direct queries.
Respectfully, API consumers don't obey "should" or "shouldn't" dictates very
well when they are not given an alternative and there is no legitimate way
to claim that the hook API for tags is complete because the plugin authors
haven't had a chance to work with it yet.  To paraphrase you, the community
doesn't always use the tools the way you expect them to.

Some more tenets of software design:
Change is hard.  Change later is harder.
Fixing something later incurs a greater cost then fixing something earlier.
It takes a long time to regain the trust of your users (including theme and
plugin authors) but very little time to lose it.
Obligating others to spend time upgrading is not endearing.  To heck with
your "Web 2.0" daily code drop buzz.

I restate my position:  Fix the DB concerns now.  Whether that means staying
with what you got or not.  Make this your final answer.

-- 
SteveL