Re: Yet another serialization format?

On 6/30/11 2:03 PM, William Waites wrote:
> * [2011-06-29 21:50:08 +0100] Kingsley Idehen<kidehen@openlinksw.com>  écrit:
>
> ] You are saying, in plain English, with regards to basic computer science:
> ]
> ] Disambiguating a Name from an Address doesn't matter when constructing
> ] Linked Data Structures.
> ]
> ] If that were true, I wouldn't even be able to send this email.
>
> Ain't necessarily so.
>
> Some popular programming languages, Java comes to mind, purposely
> unify pointer and literal value (as manifested by name) at the syntax
> level with no bad-side effects. The compiler can tell from the context
> which is meant. Java has its faults but this isn't one of them.
>

Java is a language associated with a Virtual Machine that hooked into an 
OS. It is doing the same indirection game. It simply abstracts it from 
the developer. That's part of its delivery of object oriented functionality.

Object orientation is about indirection. Objects' have distinct identity.

> This is done precisely because housekeeping around addresses in
> languages like C and C++ is difficult and error prone. In fact most
> successful modern languages like Python or Perl or Ruby or Go don't
> give you an easy way to get at addresses at all; you always work
> with names.

See my comments above.
> Programming languages are not quite the same as linked data but in
> this case I think there is a strong analogy...

Programming is about orchestrated Create, Update, Delete operations 
against Data via Addresses.

Programming languages facilitate the above.

Programming languages interface with host operating systems.

Linked Data is about data representation.

REST is about a form of CRUD orchestration against network addresses (URLs).

REST and Linked Data is a form of Distributed Computing with Data 
Objects that many efforts failed to deliver in the past e.g., CORBA.

It is good old basic stuff but at InterWeb (network) scales.

> Cheers,
> -w


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
President&  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Received on Thursday, 30 June 2011 18:21:22 UTC