- 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