[QUANTITY] Data Model for Quantity v0.5 - designing jet fighters (off topic design philosophy)

[Martin Hill]

> No.  You can not design a jet fighter by continuous improvement on a
> bicycle.

That might be a bad example.  Weren't the Wright brother's bicycle 
manufacturers?  

In fact we can develop all kinds of smaller things separately (eg machine 
guns, rockets, bombs, fuels, tyres, materials, pilot training, ergonomic 
control pads, etc) much more easily than trying to build a jet fighter from 
scratch with no knowledge of any of these things. And first we put together a 
biplane which is a bicycle with a frame made of wood and paper and a 
motorcycle engine and a machine gun borrowed from an armoured car, and then 
we improve on each bit, adding it back into the whole as we go.  At no point 
in any of this development to we need to say 'we MUST have a common framework 
that will last us until WW3'.

This might be a poor analogue, but I really don't see the need to have a 
single data model, a single required Quantity, a single data format.  We *do* 
need to have and understand mechanisms for assembling our components so that 
they interoperate, but even these mechanisms we should expect to change with 
time.

MC

-- 
Martin Hill
Astrogrid/AVO, ROE
Tel: 07901 55 24 66