| To: | "'[ontolog-forum] '" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> |
|---|---|
| From: | "Rich Cooper" <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> |
| Date: | 2012年2月29日 11:02:55 -0800 |
| Message-id: | <AE6470D3EC4B447C9AE485CCCB742C1B@Gateway > |
Dear Matthew,
My advice to anyone working on programs that were written thirty years ago is to find another job. The technology is outdated, the tools have become much, much better, languages are more expressive, and subsystems can be licensed far more effectively now. My advice to managers who have a thirty year old software system of significant size is to muddle along as best they can while building an entirely new replacement using modern technology.
The only value in creaking along with thirty year old technology is in hoping it will go away soon and be replaced by something more functional.
In any case, the sunk cost of that 30 year old project has no current value other than avoiding replacement costs. So why try to tack ontologies on top of something with a very limited lifespan? I see ontologies, if they have a place at all, as newly emerging solutions to yet unidentified problems. Our concern should be to identify exactly which kinds of problems can be solved with ontologies. Only then will they have clear value.
-Rich
Sincerely,
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew West
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
10:48 AM
To: '
Subject: Re:
Dear Rich,
My experience in software development in teams is that the vocabulary used is absolutely essential to the two programmers discussing their current issue of interfacing with each other. Whether other programmers use the same word or not isn’t significant to them; they are not writing programs to be readable until possibly after the said programs actually work. So the problem is already solved before any ontology is used, dictated, or agreed to. Then there’s time to adjust words to fit some manager’s choice of vocabulary, but that is AFTER the problem of a working program has already been solved.
And what about the situation when program A was written 30 years ago to support a nuclear power plant, the writer of which has since died, and the writer of the second programme now has to write interfaces to programs needed to decommission that nuclear power plant over the next 20 years.
Regards
Matthew West
Information Junction
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