On 07/08/12 16:04, rusi wrote:
On Aug 7, 7:34 pm, lipska the kat<lipskathe...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Never thought so for a moment, good to know you can be reasonable as
well as misguided ;-)
Well Lipska I must say that I find something resonant about the 'no-
person' thing, though I am not sure what.
You also said something about 'user' being more acceptable. From a
different (opposite?) angle Dijkstra seems to be saying the same
thing, here:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD618.html
Wonder what you make of it?
This text is often quoted in discussions I have had on this subject on
Usenet and other forums.
Professor Dijkstra is far more eloquent that I could ever hope to be.
I don't profess to be an academic nor do I have the rhetorical ability
of some of the people in this group, having said that I think the
professor may be equally as indignant about the word elbowing it's way
into his native language as he is about the way the word is used in the
computing industry but here is my rationale for thinking that there is a
case for a class called User.
A 'User' of a computer system can be another computer system, equally a
Person can be a user of a computer system. Denying the use of the
concept User may inhibit certain thought processes. At the very least
'User' can be used as a place holder indicating that we are aware that
we are dealing with something that will eventually need to communicate
outside of it's boundaries. Abstracting away an entire 'class' of
concepts into a single 4 letter word can be wonderfully liberating. When
you tell a group of struggling software developers to ignore external
influences but be aware that there is this thing called 'User' that will
eventually have to communicate with the thing we are inventing they
breath a huge sigh of relief and start to focus on what is important,
namely the business logic of the entity that is employing them. Once a
basic design has been thrashed out we can start thinking about how
external systems (and 'People') interface with the representation of the
business we have invented. We then iterate and re-iterate as external
influences invariably affect our design, however the core design remains
and acts as an anchor to our thinking. In the past, when we have got
confused and frustrated with these external influences we have gone back
to our original design to ground ourselves again.
Having said all this it has never been my experience that we actually
end up with a User Class in any design I have been involved in.
Eventually we just find ourselves in a place where the 'User' has
transmogrified into a collection of facades and interfaces that present
a view of the system to the outside world.
I'm still undecided over the whole 'User' thing actually, I don't think
I can see a time when I will have a User Class in one of my systems but
as I don't want to get 'dogmatic' about this I remain open to any ideas
that might include such a Class.
Person however is an entirely different matter and will never appear in
my systems in any way shape or form ...this is not dogma, it's a fact.
lipska
--
Lipska the Kat: Troll hunter, sandbox destroyer
and farscape dreamer of Aeryn Sun
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