[doctor_eval]

The only thing that matters is the implementation of the system you’re communicating with or using.

With any luck, their interpretation of the specification will be similar enough to yours that you can communicate.

The only wishful thinking in such cases is that the implementation will perfectly implement your interpretation of the spec. The code you’re calling isn’t going to magically conform to your interpretation just because it says it’s conformant.

This is why we have interop testing and even interop conferences. Specs almost always have subtle ambiguities and missing details which implementers need to fill in themselves.

[kazinator]

Why would we have interop conferences, when the only thing that matters is the implementation of the system you're using?

[doctor_eval]

The comment I'm ultimately replying to is this:

> In computing, the specification is the gold standard, followed by documented, committed implementation behaviors

my point is that a specification is not the gold standard, because it can be interpreted differently by different readers.

We need interop conferences to help identify the places where the specification is insufficient to fully and unambiguously describe the desired behaviours.

This can only happen because of input from implementors. And since the specifications are always evolving, they are always going to trail the implementations.