Birth of a Blog

On this date I had the blinding realization that after a year and a half of thinking and note scribbling about this thing I was calling Existential Programming, I should grab the domain name and start a blog to plant my flag on the name and topic.  I had the thought while recording notes on the original ideas that led to Existential Programming...

Recalling the inspiration for Existential Programming, the concept

While working on a Javascript project in early 2006, I became aware of the differences between Java class-based objects and Javascript's prototype-based objects. I wanted to work with Java-like classes and researched existing attempts to implement them and what it would take to "do it right".  In the course of comparing different attempts, I came across different definitions of "class".

Once I realized the ability to dynamically add and delete attributes of an object in Javascript, I realized that one could nicely map them onto semantic-network relations/tuples. I already knew about EAV database schemas.  I had the epiphany that O/O and E/R and S/N modeling could all be made isomorphic once one had class-less objects as Javascript had.

Once I realized that classes were isomorphic to semantic networks, and having already known that computer ontologies were anything but universally agreed upon, I had the epiphany that OO class structures were too restrictive because they assume a single ontology.  On the other hand, I did not want to give up the benefits of strong typing.  So I had the idea that objects should be able to simultaneously house the attributes of multiple ontologies, and with class-less objects I could see how to implement the whole system.

Together, these trains of thought somehow gave rise to the intuition "I'll bet people have already thought about this...like maybe in Philosophy?". I quickly discovered it had everything to do with this topic. And once I found out what Existentialism was, it became clear that class-less objects have the same deep idea.

So, I coined the term "Existential Programming" to refer to the whole "project" of exploiting type-less objects to implement multiple strong types simultaneously.