Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

October 9, 2011

Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns

Filed under: Java,Language,Language Design — Patrick Durusau @ 6:43 pm

Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns

From the post:

They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs: they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!
— Humpty Dumpty

Hello, world! Today we’re going to hear the story of Evil King Java and his quest for worldwide verb stamp-outage.1

Caution: This story does not have a happy ending. It is neither a story for the faint of heart nor for the critical of mouth. If you’re easily offended, or prone to being a disagreeable knave in blog comments, please stop reading now.

Before we begin the story, let’s get some conceptual gunk out of the way.

What I find compelling is the notion that a programming language should follow how we think, that is the most of us.

If you want a successful topic map, should it follow/mimic the thinking of:

  1. the author
  2. the client
  3. intended user base?

#1 is easy, that’s the default and requires the least work.

#2 is instinctive, but you will need to educate the client to #3.

#3 is golden if you can hit that mark.

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