Re: Objects and Relations

From: Marshall <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com>
Date: 16 Feb 2007 19:32:45 -0800
Message-ID: <1171683165.177212.193550@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

On Feb 16, 4:37 pm, "Keith H Duggar" <dug..._at_alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> I would like to claim that this very discussion reveals one
> of the advantages of trying to think without entities. It
> encourages us to think about the /problem/ instead. That is
> to think about our goals, our requirements, our knowledge,
> etc. It forces us to consider the facts at hand and those
> that may arise and design solutions for handling them.

Yeah.

I used to have to deal with this vaguely uneasy feeling that terminology was an indicator of some piece of wisdom that I didn't have access to. So I'd hear talk of, say, UML or OOAD or whatever and think, oh, heck, I better learn what that is. So I'd buy a book and it'd be really hard to understand. I'd push and push, and eventually I'd figure out that they were just doing something straightforward, like "programming" or "data modelling" or something, but they had dressed it up in some fancy clothes, added some extraneous concepts, applied some arbitrary rules, etc. The intent was to obscure rather than to reveal. Make it look like more than it was. Really annoying.

I remember reading a guy on comp.lang.functional describing going through the same process, but over the phrase "dependency injection." After a week of reading he figured out it meant "abstraction" (as in "lambda abstraction.") In other words it was just the process of parameterizing code.

The thing about entities is, what does it buy me? I've got relations; I know how they work. Now I'm supposed to layer this "entities" concept over the top of that. What do I have now that I didn't before?

Seriously, what?

Marshall Received on Fri Feb 16 2007 - 21:32:45 CST