in reply to (OT) Terminology Oriented Programming

This is pretty similar to education where a goggle for -based would turn up as many hits as a search for -oriented does in IT. Teachers are confronted with new your-name-here-based teaching methods every few months/years. Two things seem not to work - a) dropping everything and orienting (cough) yourself exculsively to the new fad and b) ignoring all new fads and sticking with what you've always done just because it's what you've always done.

I think it was in one of the Agile-Oriented books that the author used the acronym BDUF (Big Design Up Front). I thought to myself, well there's a useless acronym and one that no one is expected to memorize long term. But dang, as a short-term thing, it worked well in that the book chapter was easy to read and summarizing one approach with that acronym allowed the author to talk about a whole group of issues with one word. (and dang, I seem to have memorized the sucker). So I kind of judge these new words and acronyms and -based/-oriented things by the usefulness of their summarizing ability. (A feature that is easily converted into a bug).

Ok, gotta share this one: my wife's in the health care profession and noticed that a certain hospital used the acronym FDGB on some patient charts. On inquiry, she found out it stands for the well known medical syndrome "Fall Down Go Boom". :-)

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Re: Re: (OT) Terminology Oriented Programming
by flyingmoose (Priest) on Dec 10, 2003 at 18:15 UTC

    I say keep a wide array of weapons, and choose the right one for any job. Sadly, this is unpopular in a world of OOP-only design-patterns-forever java-is-the-holy-grail IT folks. They can't see the light and call unbelievers ignorant. They show up with a knife at a gun fight. If only HR and management would understand TMTOWTDI.