- From: Craig Webster <craig@xeriom.net>
- Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 12:09:31 +0100
- To: semantic_web@googlegroups.com
- Cc: Robert Stevens <robert.stevens@manchester.ac.uk>, wangxiao@musc.edu, public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org
Hi, > Dear Robert, We certainly do need to enable, but I do see preaching > as critical as well. I see it happen far too often in our field that > people jump into large projects and "just do it" without proper > design and deliberation up front. They end up wasting huge amounts > of effort, and creating artifacts that waste the time of others > as well. > > Biologists learn the importance of designing their experiments > carefully; I think it is imperative for the computer scientists > among us to also teach them the importance of designing their > software carefully. While the "just do it" attitude does have problems, there is also a problem with the "plan it all" attitude. The first gives you a working but hard to extend artefact. The second give you a beautiful, easy to extend and maintain artefact which can be hard to work with. The model should accurately portray the domain and the best way (in my opinion) to do this is to walk the middle ground: plan, design, implement a model which loosely matches the domain and try to use it. After using teh model and seeing what is lacking you can then extend the model to match how it will be used. Yours, Craig -- Craig Webster | web: http://xeriom.net/ Xeriom.NET | tel: +44 (0)131 516 8595
Received on Wednesday, 12 October 2005 11:09:36 UTC