programming – tricia burmeister

I’ve been reading a lot about ontologies today, and many of the definitions and descriptions of ontologies make it seem like the classes, relations, and instances they involve are akin to the classes, relations, and instances in object-oriented programming. However, then I encountered the following, which is a helpful distinction in thinking about all of this:

Ontology development is different from designing classes and relations in object-oriented programming. Object-oriented programming centers primarily around methods on classes—a programmer makes design decisions based on the operational properties of a class, whereas an ontology designer makes these decisions based on the structural properties of a class. As a result, a class structure and relations among classes in an ontology are different from the structure for a similar domain in an object-oriented program. (source)

“What I’ve learned through Ladies Learning Code is that there is a huge group of people in our society who are ready to become creators —not just consumers —of technology and the Web. They want to build web sites, they want to prototype app ideas, they want to design and print things in 3D, they want to understand how computers and the Web work, and they want to be able to better use technology to improve their personal and professional lives. Not all of these people are comfortable venturing into the space on their own, though. It’s intimidating, and when you start, you don’t know what you don’t know. If we can get this group of people to the point where they have the knowledge and confidence to begin exploring the world of making—well, it would be a big deal.”

– Heather Payne

Tag: programming

Ontologies and Object-Oriented Programming

The Power to Make Things