On Dec 09, 2013, at 8:53 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
That addresses David Eddy's concern about how
people (and programmers really are people) use
words in documenting what they do, produce, or
experience.
Thank you for remembering my rants on this issue. I'm flattered.
Please though to understand that while I typically describe my issue in
terms of programming tasks, this "naming standards" challenge is not
at all confined to just programmers (after all, other than 3rd shift, blue
collar operators, programmers are pretty much bottom of the pile).
In my own mind, each & every layer of the SDLC—software development
life cycle, which is more aptly P(roduct)DLC, I(dea)DLC—has it's own unique
impact on language. To ignore multiple layers of complexity, while the
CEO could be comfortable to speak or read "customer account number",
elsewhere that plain English will of necessity or perversion need to be
custAcctNo (and CUST-ACT-NO and cust_acct_nbr, etc.).
From CEO to mail room clerk, everyone brings different language,
understanding, life experiences & motivations to the table.
The top dog, CEO, denizens of mahogany row, Four Stars, or chief
poobas can no more tell the mail room clerk what words & meanings to use
than the mail room clerk can tell the CEO.
Didn't work for the Babylonians.
Certainly has not worked in the eye blink I've been directly interested
over the past 33 years & from what I've seen has not been cracked since Arlington Hall became
involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington_Hall
That is also my concern, but I
consider that dictionary of words to URIs to be a
personal, individual user suite of preferences for
words represented lexically. I don't think
it
will be feasible in the next decade to find a
universal dictionary. The best I expect is
an
editable dictionary which can be copied and edited
by any user.