Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names

[dipteryx at freeler.nl]

The idea of adapting biological nomenclature so that
it fits in databases reminds me of the early days of
computers when software was written to fit the current
model, and any new model made it necessary to throw
out the previous work and start anew. Or, for that matter,
cutting off sections of famous paintings to make them fit 
their newly allotted wall space.

It seems much simpler to wait until databasers grow up
and can handle concepts beyond those aimed to fit in the 
grasp of a 3-year old?

Paul  

> Op 08-02-2022 17:36 schreef Scott Thomson via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>:
> [...]
> However, taking off my biologist or linguist hat for a moment. As a
> computer programmer having designed databases, mostly in SQL I think there
> are a lot of valid reasons to be rid of gender agreement and just use
> original spelling. Mostly these come down to the accuracy of pick up by
> databases of these issues. It is one aspect that could be avoided making
> all databases far more accurate and with simpler rules. It should be
> remembered that as I was taught when I did software engineering, a computer
> program is a recipe designed for a 3 year old, the computer may be faster
> than us, but do not equate that to more intelligent. Famous movie quote, it
> just runs programs. The computer cannot make any decision it is not told to
> make. Therefore if we want high speed and excruciatingly accurate data
> reading by these databases, then we should be making it easier for
> databases to read and process data, not harder. [...]