Tractor Coupling Metaphor

  From: Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>
  Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
  Subject: Re: I envy newbies
  Date: 19 Jul 1999 11:30:29 -0400
  Message-ID: <m2yagcbqsq.fsf@desk.crynwr.com>

  claird@Starbase.NeoSoft?.COM (Cameron Laird) writes:

  > Suggestive episode from the history of agricultural mechanization:
  > one of the still under-celebrated inventions was the three-point
  > hitch, which DRAMATICALLY simplified the quotidian realities of
  > hooking diverse implements to ones chosen platform.  (Oh; and
  > power-take-off couplings, too.)  I leave implications to language
  > theory to the usual advocates of gluing technology.

The metaphor has to do with ScriptingLanguages and AlternateHardAndSoftLayers.

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The problem with software is that the interface is more complicated than that. The tractor is merely pulling things. However, suppose a device had to tap into power, fuel, hydraulics, etc. of the tractor engine in order to avoid violating OnceAndOnlyOnce and/or making the device too heavy. Or connect up to the steering and driving mechanism so that one person can control the tractor from the back of a planting device, for example. Now the specification of a given brand of tractor makes a big difference. If each brand has to follow a standard for such hook-ups, if vendors even bother to agree to standards, then it limits creativity and variation in tractor design. -t

Well, then, the question becomes, how much creativity and variation is necessary in tractor design? The nine pin VGA video connector of the 1980s provided all the flexibility required to interconnect video sources with the monitors of the time. When SVGA came on the scene the industry changed to a fifteen pin connector. Form follows function.

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See: CouplingAndCohesion, GenericBusinessFrameworkUnobtainable

CategoryMetaphor