[s17n]

The reason that European tech sucks is that people in Europe are open to such arguments. If an engineer in the US started talking about SHOULD vs MUST, some PM would just give them that "what the fuck did I just listen to" face, spend the next few minutes gently trying to convince them that the customer experience matters more than the spec, and if they fail, escalate and get the decision they want.

For example, why does Google handle this differently for consumer and enterprise accounts? Well it's Google so the answer could always just be "they are disorganized" but there's a good chance that in both cases, it was the pragmatic choice given the slightly different priorities of these types of customers.

[youknownothing]

Not my PM (in the US). My PM would try to avoid anything that is not absolutely necessary and therefore ask developers not to develop anything that isn't a MUST. I know that we like making fun of Europe for their alleged lack of innovation but this isn't a Europe thing.

[dlopes7]

Implementing a 20 years old needed RFC header is the cutting edge of innovation

[lingrush4]

Your PM most definitely would not tell you to skip a feature that is needed for your emails to be delivered to Gmail accounts. What a preposterous thing to lie about.

[Dylan16807]

The PM wouldn't know about that gmail behavior at that point in the development cycle.

[shaan7]

Well the current US Administration would agree - the law doesn't matter, we need to be "pragmatic" and do what we think is right. Rules be damned.

Once you deviate a bit from the standard, you're down a slippery slope. Its not that difficult to use pragmatism to justify wrongdoing.

[patrickmcnamara]

Do bugs and bad implementations not exist in US software? If an US company did this, nobody would be bloviating about how it is a cultural issue or whatever.

[bmn__]

> some PM would just give them that "what the fuck did I just listen to" face

Some people have become way too comfortable taking for granted that it is okay to treat others in an uncivil fashion. To those I say: keep it up, and we shall revert to the fundamentals of society where violence is an option and one day you are copping punches in the face, or getting shackled and thrown in a ditch somewhere for the ravens. Behave like an animal, get treated like one.

[mrweasel]

Standards are important, and the meaning assigned to words are important, but if your very important email does go through, because Google thinks you're wrong, you add the bloody message-id. I really do agree, I don't care about the linguistic/legal/standard/technological reason as to why Google might be wrong, if I can't deliver email to Gsuite customers, I add the message-id.

You're precisely right that customer experience matter, but I wouldn't put it past some conservative European company to go: Well Google is wrong, so they should fix that. Google doesn't care, you can't make them care, you can't even contact them. Just make it work for your customer.

[quadrifoliate]

Seriously, I hope that none of the posters upthread arguing about SHOULD v/s MUST in some standards body document are in charge of real world money making software.

Google and Microsoft's email practices define a pseudo-RFC in practice. As an engineer, I hate this. As a civic participant I can vote against it. But as a person that sells my software services for a living, I am going to implement the Google/Microsoft standards to the letter, not argue about definitions in an RFC.