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Classic article by Shirky - I still see data-centric programmers making this fundamental underlying mistake all the time.

• silentbicycle 18y ago
  Definitely! I found the article doubly interesting because 1) I worked in a library through college* and remember finding such skews in organization rather odd, and 2) while he doesn't have any programming-specific examples, it also shows why trying to fit everything into a hierarchy of classes tends to involve a lot of awkward workarounds in any sufficiently complicated (i.e., real) system. I don't have a CS degree (history, actually), but I wonder if, when cliche examples such as e.g. Animal -> Mammal -> Dog/Cat/etc. was presented ("See! You can fit things into a tree. OO simulates the real world!"), somebody had the foresight to ask how things like monotremes are represented. (Hopefully without being smug about it - it's an important question, far too important to just be a chance for That Guy to be a smart-ass.) Library and information science professionals (e.g. catalogers) understand the enormity of the issue better than most programmers, in my experience. There's a lot of room for cross-pollination of ideas there. * Which was a great combination, btw.