It simply can't work

Any question or comment? - asked the presenter.

An old man stood up: - It can't work! The whole concept is nonsense, it will be slow, unreliable, nobody will want to use it. Plus, the concept is not new and it does not solve anything that can't be solved by today's standard procedures. It simply can't work.

It happened several years ago at an international conference about databases. The talk was about XML databases.

The presenter smiled at his embittered old friend. - I would like you to remember this conference some 30 years ago. I talked about SQL then and you criticized my talk with the same words as today. I ask you, can SQL work?

The question is not whether it can or cannot work. It is always about you. Do you want it to work?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've got your point, but I guess you've chosen a bad example: XML databases won't work. At least, as far as I can judge from having observed a bunch of really smart people who really wanted it to work :-)

Petr Olmer said...

Will not? It depends on what you want them to do. What about the semantic web - it's definitely not working for the last like ten years. Does it say anything about its future? I don't think so.