On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Peter Schlumpf <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> What's wrong with the library world developing its own domain language?


EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

We're already in a world of pain because we have our own data formats and
ways of dealing with them, all of which have basically stood idle while 30
years of advances computer science and information architecture have whizzed
by us with a giant WHOOSHing sound.

Having a bunch of non-experts design and implement a language that's
destined from the outset to be stuck in a tiny little ghetto of the
programming world is a guaranteed way to live with half- or un-supported
code, no decent libraries, and yet another legacy of pain we'd have to
support.

 I'm not picking on programming in particular. It's a dumb-ass move  EVERY
time a library is presented with a problem for which there are experts and
decades of research literature, and it choses to ignore all of that and
decide to throw a committee of librarians (or whomever else happens to be in
the building at the time) at it based on the vague idea that librarians are
just that much smarter (or cheaper) than everyone else (I'm looking at you,
usability...)

 -Bill-




-- 
Bill Dueber
Library Systems Programmer
University of Michigan Library