3 ms·

I agree, but I think it has interesting parallels to problems that crop up in sufficiently complicated OO class hierarchy designs, and I'm not sure that discuss

I agree, but I think it has interesting parallels to problems that crop up in sufficiently complicated OO class hierarchy designs, and I'm not sure that discussion surrounding "design patterns" has fully acknowledged such issues. People in some other niches (librarians, for one) have spent a lot of time thinking about these problems. They're generally struggling with managing a different kind of complexity than programmers are, but I'd love to see more cross-pollination of ideas. I'm just trying to generate discussion.

gruseom 18y ago
That's true, a lot of the fundamental problems are the same. I suppose OO design patterns are workarounds for some of them. Some time ago I read a collection of articles by Michael Jackson (the computing one) and it turns out he was making similar arguments against this kind of ontology in the 70s. Incidentally, I always thought "ontology" meant "philosophy of being", not cataloguing systems.