Re: Bob's 'Self-aggrandizing ignorant' Count: Was: What databases have taught me

George wrote:

[ snippage ]

> Fair question.
>
> There exist ACM type papers based on thorough surveys of the
> literature, with the goal of documenting the OO taxonomy, a paper by DJ
> Armstrong springs to mind. Of course, as with all topics, some people
> would still prefer to hold a differing opinion but I accept it.
>

If time becomes available, I may go looking for this; in the meantime I'm reading Dave Schmidt's book on denotational semantics, which I couldn't afford new and is now a free download 20 years later. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing ? ;)

> As for "can we do without formal underpinnings", there are many
> endeavors mankind has pursued for thousands and thousands of years
> without formal underpinnings, we seem to have gotten by. For example
> languages, cooking, clothing, sport ...
>

Well, it depends how much trial and error you're willing to accept I suppose. How many people did we poison before we worked out how to cook chicken properly, or which berries were safe to eat, for example ? Given that we're essentially working with formal abstract systems, surely we should be able to choose the best formalisms to describe what we're doing, so that we know *exactly* what we're doing, rather than making more-or-less educated guesses ? Received on Fri Jun 30 2006 - 13:10:23 CEST