Re: abutment = aboutement?

[Nimish Shah <nimish@cs.york.ac.uk>]

On Wednesday 20 August 2008 2:13 pm, Michael Barr wrote:
> I am NOT about to change a word that has apparently existed for
> over 50 years just because it is not particularly meaningful.

I am going to risk putting my two cents here and perhaps being
rejected by the moderator.

One of the reasons why a word may need to be changed even if it has
existed for 50 years is to avoid confusion. For example in the
book "Categories for Software Engineering" the author talks about
the "social life" of a set being the other sets it talks to. For a
long while this puzzled me, until it dawned on me that the idea
that the author was using was that the origins of modern
Object-Orientated Programming (ie C++, Java) started with
SmallTalk. In SmallTalk, objects communicated with one another by
sending messages; and so making an analogy with familiar concepts
that programmers use "sets have a social life" because SW
objects "talk" to each other by sending messages.

Stated another way it is difficult to see how a (Mathematical)
object is the same as a (Software) object. The latter gets created
and destroyed as the object comes in and out of scope. Hence what
does one do? When stated generically, does the word object mean a
mathematical one (around 60 years old) or a software one (more
widely used)?

Nim.