[alicebot-archcomm] topic attribute

[Jon Baer]

"Christopher Fahey [askrom]" wrote:

> Out of everyone who participates regularly on this committee, I think
> it's safe to say that I have the *absolute least* computer programming
> experience. I'm a total amateur/dilettante, a hobbyist newbie simpleton.
> Trust me when I say some of this stuff is going to confuse the heck out
> of people.

First, was good to see you @ the party!  Thanks for coming by, it got super
packed by the end of the night.

Second, the computer experience programming has very little to do with
<logic> in general, in this thing called late night hacking most of us just
come up with names for things and they just stick around.  Me personally I
have learned 2 things, it's not gonna matter what anything is going to be
named in AIML, you can change it all you want, and in the long long run,
some version might not even get into AIML @ all.  Basically what I mean by
this is that alot of people probably @ some point won't care what or how the
responses are formed, just as long as they work ;-) and that could mean
maybe some flat file with just the paths.

The whole "name" thing can probably be traced back to me because when
distinguising <set_something>to something</set_something> it was just
thought out on what is the "name" of the property I am setting.  That was
the question I asked myself.  Changing it to support something else is so
non trivial and would take no effort.

So my view is if it's changed and a massive search and replace is done on
Rich's AIML again, then be it ;-)

- Jon