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Building Objects Out of Plato: Applying Philosophy, Symbolism, and Analogy to Software Design.

The author argues for the application of philosophy, literary textual analysis and analogy analysis to the designing of computer software. The article uses Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" and Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" as examples. The author constructs charts that link the symbols...

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Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 49; no. 10; pp. 66 - 71
Main Author: Giguette, Ray
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery Oct2006
Subjects:
Computer programming
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849
Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961
Computer software
Charts, diagrams, etc.
Symbolism
Signs & symbols
Analogy
Theory of knowledge
Reasoning
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The author argues for the application of philosophy, literary textual analysis and analogy analysis to the designing of computer software. The article uses Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" and Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" as examples. The author constructs charts that link the symbols of the various works of literature to "object-orientated terminology." The author argues that by attempting to determine what specific parts of software code symbolizes, greater understanding of the purpose of computer software may be ascertained.