Extrapolating, I see a day where there will only be data for machines,
no data for humans (or, relatively very, very little). When that occurs,
essentially all data will be enumerations with defined semantics, all
processing will be symbolic processing.
Let's prepare for the future. When designing a data format identify
those parts of your data which will be processed exclusively by
machines; be sure to define them with enumerations (no string datatype
here!)
Comments?
Most processing is already symbolic processing. Every text character is
a symbol, in information theory terms anyway. I suppose you are in
essence advocating using finite sets of symbols rather than infinite
sets. Or you could say closed sets vs open sets.
