Another Morphic Tutorial

Adam Bridge abridge at mac.com
Thu Apr 19 18:06:29 UTC 2001


on 4/18/01 11:39 PM, Dan Shafer at dshafer at yahoo.com thoughtfully wrote:

> Thanks, Richard. Another good argument for staying with what we have.
> 
> I've changed my Counter tutorial to match this terminology and I'll stay with
> it through the rest of my work.

This is probably somewhat simple-minded, but I'll venture out into this
space anyway. After all, how dumb can I look. <cringing>

I think changing nomenclature from the standard programming language to one
used to express new ideas to a reader can be done the way a fiction writer
might choose to do a flashback: which is to slip into past perfect tense for
a few sentences and then return to the traditional past tense. This is such
a standard literary device that we don¹t' notice it any more. It just works.
Coming back out you do the same thing, shifting into perfect to ease the
narrative transition.

Shouldn't nomenclature work the same way. Programmers have a metaphor they
have constructed to describe what they wish to achieve. As a writer you have
a different one which seems to fit the situation better from a particular
point of view. Introduce the concept, apply your metaphor, point out that
the implementers have a different one, then explore and expound upon it.
Then, at the end, after you've laid out the details and now its familiar,
you change back into the implementer's point of view and shift the language.
Now you have given the reader two different ways to explore a concept and
perhaps in doing so, if your metaphor is suitably drawn, you may allow the
reader to explore the concepts in his own way using two different metaphors
plus his own understanding of it. If you're lucky he'll create his own and
begin to have a synthesis.

If you have a way that's better, I'd suggest using that and then helping the
reader learn new terminology along the way.

This, of course, could be completely at odds with 25 years of intense
cognitive research. It's just that it works for me when I read about these
sorts of things.

Adam





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