Re: All hail Neo!

[Quoted] Bob Badour wrote:
> Marshall Spight wrote:
>
> > What would you use instead? The decent tools that I'm aware
> > of are empty sets and tagged unions.
>
> And full normalization. Don't forget full normalization, which is always
> applicable whenever empty sets apply, and which I consider a better
> solution than empty sets.
>
> In some cases, I would use the type system to create special types akin
> to tagged unions.
>
> > You can get whatever
> > semantics you want from tagged unions and functions over
> > same. The behavior of fold (or aggregates) over incomplete
> > sets is well-defined; the functional programming crown has
> > beat fold to death. I don't see any reason for the system
> > to supply an UNKNOWN special value out of the box, but
> > as I say you can code one up if you want it.
>
> Yes, that's exactly my point. I don't want a dbms to incorporate some
> inconsistent and problematic silver bullet. If I want my types to have
> an unknown value, I will create them that way. The type system will
> enforce consistency while the dbms continues to use binary logic.

[Quoted] Plain text is notorious poor for conveying the presence or the absence of irony. So I want to explicitly tag the following paragraph as non-ironic:

I have changed my mind on this topic. I now agree with you that the empty-set solution is generally a poor one.

> Self reports are useless or worse than useless. I don't know where you
> get your ideas regarding HCI, but it sounds more like you got them from
> a book on UML than anything from the HCI community.

Bob,

[Quoted] Lately, and over the years both, you have called me all manner of names, and linked me directly or indirectly with all manner of societal ills, such as anti-empiricism, a weak European response to Nazism and Islamic Fascism, 7th century pedophilia, and homeopathy. But I say to you sir, that you have crossed a line, yes, *crossed a line* I say, when you mention me at the same time as you mention UML.

Marshall Received on Mon May 01 2006 - 05:36:29 CEST