Re: J4 - presentation/discussion on "Future of the COBOL Standard"

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:59:44 -0600, Robert <no@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Technical language can give a false illusion of accuracy. My Business
Requirement is the
>fourth attempt to solve a problem. The first three were precisely written
and implemented,
>but produced wrong answers because they made false assumptions about the
real world. 
>One assumption was that a US wireline telephone number can be
geographically located by
>taking the first six digits of the number and looking up the location of
the central
>office containing the switch handling that exchange. Can you figure out
why that sometimes
>gives wrong answers? Hint: old numbers are in area code 909, medium aged
ones are in 915,
>newer ones are in 951. The answer is not call forwarding nor foreign
exchange.

Such wrong assumptions are missed in English as well as in jargon.   I
suppose there are some who mistake precision with accuracy, but it is
our job to make sure that our users do not.

Fortunately, most of my users are accountants.