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The arguments in Atwood's and Neward's articles stand well on their own. The war analogy is there as link bait.

wyw 17y ago
If anyone could be accused of linkbaiting it would be Neward since he wrote the original article titled "The Vietnam of Computer Science". But I think it's less useful to think of the war analogy as linkbait than as a didactic tool to bring attention to aspects of ORM use that Neward wished to highlight. Creating effective analogies is the same strategy used by good teachers the world over.
- jhancock 17y ago
  The first thing wrong with this title is the article is about "software engineering", not "computer science". The second thing wrong is engineering is a discipline that teaches you about trade-offs, costs, and finding balance in your solutions. I had excellent engineering teachers. Never once did they compare the tough problems we were solving to Vietnam.
  - wyw 17y ago
    Maybe they didn't compare tough problems to Vietnam but my point was that good teachers often have a knack for translating difficult-to-grasp abstract concepts into the familiar and the concrete. Some people look down on such teachers and accuse them of dumbing things down. I would say on the contrary that the job of a teacher is exactly to dumb things down.
fauigerzigerk 17y ago
The Vietnam analogy is bad in many respects but I can see where they're coming from. ORM was a battlefield, many faught hard (including myself) and ended up walking way disgusted and defeated at the same time.
- wyw 17y ago
  In what respects is the Vietnam analogy less meaningful than the rather banal battlefield analogy that you just made?
  - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
    I didn't mean to say that it was less meaningful. My battlefield was meant to be a Vietnam battlefield, not some alternative or better analogy. I'm defending Neward's analogy up to a point. Any war analogy of course misses the humanitarian horror that is a war. That's why it's always a problematic analogy as well.

wyw 17y ago

If anyone could be accused of linkbaiting it would be Neward since he wrote the original article titled "The Vietnam of Computer Science". But I think it's less useful to think of the war analogy as linkbait than as a didactic tool to bring attention to aspects of ORM use that Neward wished to highlight. Creating effective analogies is the same strategy used by good teachers the world over.

jhancock 17y ago
The first thing wrong with this title is the article is about "software engineering", not "computer science". The second thing wrong is engineering is a discipline that teaches you about trade-offs, costs, and finding balance in your solutions. I had excellent engineering teachers. Never once did they compare the tough problems we were solving to Vietnam.
- wyw 17y ago
  Maybe they didn't compare tough problems to Vietnam but my point was that good teachers often have a knack for translating difficult-to-grasp abstract concepts into the familiar and the concrete. Some people look down on such teachers and accuse them of dumbing things down. I would say on the contrary that the job of a teacher is exactly to dumb things down.

fauigerzigerk 17y ago

The Vietnam analogy is bad in many respects but I can see where they're coming from. ORM was a battlefield, many faught hard (including myself) and ended up walking way disgusted and defeated at the same time.

wyw 17y ago
In what respects is the Vietnam analogy less meaningful than the rather banal battlefield analogy that you just made?
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago
  I didn't mean to say that it was less meaningful. My battlefield was meant to be a Vietnam battlefield, not some alternative or better analogy. I'm defending Neward's analogy up to a point. Any war analogy of course misses the humanitarian horror that is a war. That's why it's always a problematic analogy as well.