language and adoption

Hi,

Reading rdf-ig over the last week made me go back and 
a paper by Guy Steele, which in turn bounced me to a 
Richard Gabriel essay. It's interesting to consider 
RDF in light of these two essays, as it moves into 
version 2.0.


Guy Steele knows some stuff about language design:

"I stand on this claim: I should not 
design a small language, and I should 
not design a large one. I need to design 
a language that can grow. I need to plan 
ways in which it might grow--but I need, 
too, to leave some choices so that other 
persons can make those choices at a later 
time."
<http://www.sun.com/research/jtech/pubs/98-oopsla-growing.ps>


Richard Gabriel knows some stuff about language adoption: 

"The lesson to be learned from this is that it is 
often undesirable to go for the right thing first. 
It is better to get half of the right thing available 
so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are 
hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of 
the right thing."
<http://www.ai.mit.edu/docs/articles/good-news/good-news.html>

regards,
Bill de hOra

Received on Monday, 16 April 2001 14:02:14 UTC