It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe.

Wed Oct 17 02:18:30 UTC 2018

What it's trying to say is that you have control over your own code
but not others', in general.

So make your own code (etc) robust and forgiving since you can't edit
others' code to conform to your own understanding of what they should
be sending you.

I suppose that pre-dates github but nonetheless much of the code which
generates bits flung at you is proprietary and otherwise out of your
control but what you can control is your code's reaction to it.

And of course the bits you generate which should try to make
conservative assumptions about what they might accept and interpret as
you expect.

For example just because they sent you a seemingly malformed HTTP
request, and given that 4xx is for error codes, doesn't mean you
should return "420 You must be high!" and expect to be understood.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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