Models vs. Models

In the DSM workshop at this year's OOPSLA conference there was a presentation by a physical scientist who talked about model-based stuff. Of course he had a very different notion of what models are. For him models were essentially mathematical formalisms. The notation used for those models was also pretty obvious: mathematical notation.

What does this tell us? First of all, we have to be careful with the term "model". Other communities use it differently. Second, we can maybe learn something from the physical and mathematical communities, since they have been doing "model stuff" for quite a long time. Tools like Mathematica are powerful means to develop based on this paradigm. Maybe we should take another look...

(Of course I had been reminded of this mathematical/scientific notion of "model" before. My girlfriend actually works as an engineer in exactly this area. When we first met and then at some point got to talk about work, it took a while for us to understand each other :-))  permalink