Re: [Marxism] Reification and the multitude in software engineering

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
> The object-oriented way of describing the world is extremely useful,
> especially for designing and managing components.  It is also useful for
> describing the behaviour of components, and their performance in complex
> environments.  There are excellent techniques for creating objects out of
> processes, out of relationships, or perhaps even out of nothing.
> Philosophers and software engineers have a word for this; they call it
> reification.

Now that I am in the 3rd year of a very large-scale Intranet application
at Columbia using Java (an objected oriented language), I feel that I am
qualified to speak on this. In fact, data processing from the very
beginning has always been plagued by a failure to map reality. New
strategies for overcoming the gulf between plan and finished product
come along every 5 years or so. More often than not, they are based on
quasi-philosophical assumptions. Object orientation, for example, is
strongly influenced by Aristotelian hierarchical thinking. Everything
descends from an object. A bird descends from an animal and a crow and a
penguin descend from a bird; etc. This is supposed to be a magic bullet.
Meanwhile, the problems I am dealing with on my project have little to
do with classifying things. They have more to do with the classic
problem in data processing, which is how to get inside a user's mind and
anticipate their total needs.

Before working in object orientation, I spent about 5 years in
developing relational databases, which are supposedly another more
accurate way of describing business relationships. For example, doctors
and patients have many-to-many relationships. In other words, a patient
can have multiple doctors and vice versa. On the other hand, a patient
has a one to many relationship to admissions. This insight is based on
mathematical set theory developed by Codd and Date at IBM in the 1970s.
Oracle was the first database company to implement the schema. One of
the ironies of the business world is that relational databases and
object orientation don't quite mesh. There was talk of object databases
about 10 years ago but it never went anywhere.

I don't think technology is the issue. Building systems is difficult
because *human relationships* in the corporate world is so fucked up. If
reification on a human level was overcome, it would be a lot easier to
build systems. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that under
capitalism. Thank god I only have a few years to retire. I've been doing
this nonsense for 36 years now.


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