Re: What databases have taught me

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 02:57:37 GMT
Message-ID: <BS1ng.1380$pu3.36963@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

Marshall wrote:

> Bob Badour wrote:
>

>>I think the focus on structure to the exclusion of manipulation is a
>>mistake.

>
> And yet, people make that mistake again and again and again.
> The focus is on the easy part: structure. It is just like when
> people get in to language design and focus almost entirely on
> syntax, to the exclusion of the more important semantic issues.
>
> It's kind of an elixir thing, isn't it? Focusing on the easy part
> relieves you of the burden of thinking about the difficult
> questions of integrity and manipulation. That must be a good
> thing, right? I mean, if you had to come up with a query
> mechanism that could handle arbitrary ad hoc queries
> as simply as even SQL can, wouldn't that, like, totally
> harsh the buzz you got from reintroducing nested
> structures?

The appeal of OO just occured to me: Humans are good classifiers and classifying is a skill humans develop very early. Further, it is a skill that leads to very early positive reinforcers.

The problem is that programming, ie. applied mathematics, requires more than putting the star shaped block through the star shaped hole.

Some humans never develop sufficient abstract reasoning to master basic algebra or calculus. Those who do generally develop the skill much later than the skill of classification.

Yes, I think you hit that nail on the head. People like to focus on structure because structure is easy for humans, and humans are conditioned to expect a reward for correct classification from a very early age. If you get all the blocks inside the plastic ball, Mom gets all excited and stuff, which I suppose makes humans feel all reassured and stuff. Received on Fri Jun 23 2006 - 21:57:37 CDT