Re: DAMl "Thing" should be Top, Universal class - including concrete types

>It occured to me the other day that the choice
>of "concrete" for integers, strings, and the
>like vs. "abstract" for stuff you might want
>to model like people, places, and things
>is sort of ironic: what's concrete
>about an integer? What's abstract about a shoe?

Yes, this terminology is seriously warped. It would be better to call 
them 'reserved' or 'ancillary' or 'implemented' or some such 
locution, rather than anything which suggests a position in an 
abstraction or class heirarchy. After all, the whole point is that 
they aren't going to be *anywhere* in the class heirarchy, right?

>It's kinda like the X windows system wherein,
>counterintuitively, the wimpy little box you
>sit at is the server and the million dollar
>supercomputer over there is the client.

Well, now, if you ever had an evening job as a waiter you would 
realize that this actually makes a lot of sense.

Pat Hayes

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Received on Tuesday, 6 February 2001 00:45:42 UTC