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is outdated, the tools have become much, much better, languages are more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,
Rich Cooper
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: '[ontolog-forum]
'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What goes into a Lexicon?
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
Tel: +44 1489
880185
Mobile: +44 750
3385279
Skype:
dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
This email
originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England and
Wales No. 6632177.
Registered office:
2 Brookside, Meadow Way,
Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire,
SG6 3JE.