The Benefits of Standards
Standards are very useful and deviations from them can be very important. Take, for instance, the EU personnel data I am going through right now for my job. When there were only six states they were coded as F, D, I, B, NL, and L. Unfortunately, many states begin with D and I, for example. So when Ireland joined they were IRL, while Denmark was DK. But the 2004 made this home-grown naming convention fall apart and the EU has switched to the standard two letter ISO codes. They had to, as there are now three countries starting with E (EE, EL, ES) and with L (LT, LV, LU). If only they had done this in the beginnning, it would have made my life a lot simpler.