lagache@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) (02/07/88)
I was interested and somewhat amused by Richard
O'Keefe's comments about PROLOG coding style. Since I am
equipped with the barest of development tools, I enjoy
neither the benefits, nor suffer from the curses of a code
formatter/pretty printer. While there are a number of
conventions for proper PROLOG coding style, coding (in any
language) is a very individualistic thing, one of the few
places where a programmer can express the artistic aspects of
what is truly a craft, not a science.
While I know of a couple of simple PROLOG pretty
printers (I suppose based on LISP conventions), I would be
interested to learn if there has been much effort invested
into designing PROLOG pretty printers and/or structured
editors. Does someone have a PROLOG equivalent of EMACS
running around, and what should a PROLOG structured editor
look like?
Any comments?
Edouard Lagache
lagache@violet.berkeley.edu
P.S. While this sort of discussion probably should occur
elsewhere, one interesting question would be how to
design a "tuneable" structured editor that could be made
to conform to a programmers codings tastes.ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) (02/08/88)
In article <6890@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, lagache@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) writes: > Since I am > equipped with the barest of development tools, I enjoy > neither the benefits, nor suffer from the curses of a code > formatter/pretty printer. "Curses"? What can he be talking about? *Having* a layout program doesn't mean that you are forced to *use* it! As for development tools, all it takes is a C compiler... (Or Prolog, for that matter.) > While there are a number of > conventions for proper PROLOG coding style, coding (in any > language) is a very individualistic thing, one of the few > places where a programmer can express the artistic aspects of > what is truly a craft, not a science. > Amongst other things, a program is an act of communication. **Coding** is no more the place for being individualistic than is speech: that is the Humpty-Dumpty school of programming! A true artist will devote his creativity to devising worthwhile things to say, not to individualistic babbling. It's not the *skilled* composers who long for something more individualistic than the diatonic scale. It's not the *skilled* poet who moans about the rigidity of sonnet or haiku form. I cannot stress this sufficiently: the purpose of a program is to COMMUNICATE. We can *measure* how well people understand a program. Suggested experiment: take a number of smallish Prolog programs (one or two pages) ensure that each of them contains one bug rewrite each of them in four or five different styles take several Prolog programmers with one year's experience each give each of the programmers one version of each program measure how long it takes each programmer to find the bugs An experiment of this sort would be feasible, and I would be *very* interested in assisting. The possibility of making such a measurement means that (relative to the population the programmers are drawn from) the quality of a coding style is an objective matter. If something else turns out to be more effective than my current style, I mean to adopt it. I have already changed my Prolog style several times, in the interests of intelligibility. Looking back at some of my old code, the layout which I liked is clearly and objectively inferior to my present scheme. In fact, all of the good ideas in my present scheme came from other people! (Thanks, Grant, Nevil, Lawrence, Leon.) Has anyone out there conducted any psychology-of-programming experiments with Prolog? Could something be arranged as part of the next conference?