From: Dennis E. Hamilton
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 10:30
To: William Anderson
Subject: FW: [Orcmid's Lair] 5/22/2004 09:38:01 AM

I meant "boolean" and not "Boolean", and question 0 is how much of this is understood already, without any more information, and what is the basis for that?

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 09:38
Subject: [Orcmid's Lair] 5/22/2004 09:38:01 AM


Oh my. Was I that forever-to-remain-anonymous software architect? [Meta-Comment: I suspect that a Wiki-like structure is going to be more useful for developing coherent thought, or perhaps none of the above.]

I agree that semantics are crucial and that the work of establishing meaning needs to be addressed. I would not be surprised, however, to arive at a place where we must disavow much content for the first sentence of this paragraph. So, neo-post-modern-reconstructionist software architecture, here we come.

I have in mind an example to work on. It starts as the following "precise" (but not-necessarily valid) statement in Java:

interface com.orcmid.cs.pa.Num
{ 
/* That is, defined in package com.orcmid.cs.pa
*/

com.orcmid.cs.pa.Num next();

com.orcmid.cs.pa.Num pred();

Boolean is0();
} // Num

Because I can't do much with typography and markup here, this use of Blogger comments is not going to work and we must find another venue. Notice there are several matters to ponder already:

1. What is the behavior that is part of the interface agreement, in terms of what an implementation must provide?

2. What is the abstraction in terms of which this is conveyed/explained? What do I/we mean by that?

3. How this behavior is exploited in accomplishing some other purpose by using it in/under the implementation of something we care about -- an application, if you will?

4. What is the (set of) tacit knowledge that applies here, who says, and how can you tell?

5. Where do we start and where do we end with this? 

--
Posted by Dennis to Orcmid's Lair at 5/22/2004 09:38:01 AM