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279 points the_why_of_y | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.404s | source
1. babarock ◴[] No.11154167[source]
A lot of people are busy arguing who to blame, I just think it's interesting that sometimes you need to support non-standard software. Actually, I think it's interesting that highly successful programs are not the ones who go "not my fault, you should just implement the spec better".

Raymond Chen talked[1] about the importance of supporting that ran on Win95 but broke on WinXP, even if they weren't complying to Microsoft specs.

I also remember reading that web browsers had to go to great length to render completely non-compliant web pages.

In your experience, when should you decide to support "non-complying" behavior?

[1]: Unfortunately I cannot find the original article by Chen but I could find extensive mentions of it in [this article by Joel Spolsky](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html)

replies(1): >>11154758 #
2. fpgaminer ◴[] No.11154758[source]
This may be the Raymond Chen article you are referring to: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031224-00/?p=...