A Roman Name for Software

In 63 BC, the Roman Senate convened to determine the punishment for those who conspired with Catiline to set fire to Rome and murder its leaders. Julius Caesar, still a praetor-elect, implored his fellow senators to resist emotional impulses, cited precedent, paid homage to the law, and recommended dispersing the accused to various Italian towns, where they would remain imprisoned for life.

This speech, delivered by one of history's most formidable figures, would likely astonish contemporary leaders. However, Cato the Younger, a far less appealing counterpart, rose to address the assembly. Sallust later recorded his response in "The Catiline War," and one particular line has haunted me for weeks: "We, long ago, have already forgotten the true names of things.

For giving away what belongs to others is called generosity, and boldness in wicked actions is called courage; hence, the republic has now reached its extreme limit." The Senate ultimately sided with Cato, and while opinions on their decision vary, it's worth noting that their verdict was primarily based on a man's insistence on using accurate terminology.

This situation resonates deeply with my field, as we often sacrifice precision for superficial gains, resulting in a vocabulary that does not enrich our intellect. This phenomenon occurs in software development and systems engineering; however, the reasons behind it differ. In one case, software is compelled by external factors, like fashion cycles, while in the other, it self-destructs internally, driven by a sense of pride.

Regardless, both scenarios suffer from the same affliction: terms that fail to convey their intended meaning, leading to a lack of clarity and a societal disorder. Software software operates as a realm of discourse, where each concept endeavors to faithfully represent something existing, whether in potential or actual form, and establish logical connections between these terms.

Years ago, I expressed my belief that the genuine goal of these systems, whether acknowledged by their creators or not, is to create an isomorphism between the discourse world and a formal system. Consequently, I adopted my friend's coined title for my role: "taxonomist." Though grandiose on a business card, it aptly describes the modest role of an individual who names and categorizes, aiming to make it possible to discuss perceivable phenomena.

As I age, I observe the arsenic growing stronger. After the hype of expert systems in the 1980s, the genuine ambition behind them—formal domain representation—was abandoned, and "knowledge representation" became an embarrassment for a decade. With the advent of Java during the dotcom boom, object-oriented programming promised to capture entities' hierarchies and relationships directly in code, and we began molding domains to suit prevailing trends and the obsession with quantity, all with the aim of achieving "better knowledge representation."

Each fever begins with the promise of restoring a conceptual model, always in pursuit of the same objective, but ultimately arrives through an increasingly distorted view of reality. Why? This current fever is the most dangerous, as it penetrates the very essence of software. It merely generates words that resemble names but lack genuine meaning, serving as substitutes for true names that reference a referent.

These words are not crafted by their users; they are merely reassembled remnants of our ancestors' writings, stripped of the labor that once linked each term to a specific entity. A hastily generated schema may contain entities that appear to have meaning but, in reality, convey nothing substantial. When comprehension becomes muddled, people resort to counting, and middle management—undoubtedly decent individuals placed in untenable positions—tightens their grip on the few quantifiable aspects they can still measure, such as tickets, merge requests, velocity, adoption, and other superficial metrics.

This focus on counting supersedes genuine understanding. Regrettably, software today lacks true guardians, leaving us with only a fading memory of their purpose, and that memory is precisely what each fever consumes. Cato understood this type of forgetfulness well and, in his speech, reminded the senators that their forefathers did not elevate the republic through brute force but through diligent effort at home.