BUDDENBERGRA@usc-isi.arpa (Rex Buddenberg) (01/09/86)
For the language choice discussion... When considering programmer time and code readability, we are getting near a very important, but poorly understood aspect of software production. Picture yourself as a software engineer with several programmers working for you on a project. You in turn are responsible to other folks in the corporation who at their level of abstraction are interested in what your team is doing. You have several problems that you want your programming language to make as tractable as possible: 1) The programmers gotta be kept from tromping all over each others' memory space, variables and data structures. This is what Pascal and later structured languages are designed to do. 2) You need to be able to read the code produced by others. Code is written once but read a hundred times. I learned to program by reading others' code, and you want as much help from the language as there is. My personal experience is that neither C nor Forth make it here; Pascal comes closer, but Modula is better. 3) Explain to your boss, who is not a programmer, what the program is doing. If you want your project to thrive (read bread on the table), this is a requirement. Which would you rather try and explain -- Forth or Pascal? Be careful about judgin the merits of a language on small, solo programs. Utility programs of a few k can be done in most any languages, particularly if you are working alone on the project. But a larger project with a team (or a larger project by yourself) needs readable as well as writable code. Keep up the discussion, this is good... B BUDDENBERGRA@USC-ISI -------
zoro@fluke.UUCP (Mark Hinds) (01/14/86)
In article <1368@brl-tgr.ARPA> BUDDENBERGRA@usc-isi.arpa (Rex Buddenberg) writes: > 2) You need to be able to read the code produced by others. >Code is written once but read a hundred times. I learned >to program by reading others' code, and you want as much >help from the language as there is. My personal experience >is that neither C nor Forth make it here; Pascal comes >closer, but Modula is better. Your "personal experience" doesn't match mine. C is just as "readable" as Modula or Pascal, else mindless compilers could not generate code from it. It is possible to write difficult to understand code in ANY language. The use of meaningful names, good source formatting, Module/File and Function headers, and source comments is what makes source more understandable. I have never used or seen Forth, but if it provides for the above practices then it is possible to write understandable code in it, even if you have to comment each source line with the appropriate high level description, as in assembly language. Mark Hinds -- ____________________________________________________________ Mark Hinds {decvax,ihnp4}!uw-beaver!--\ John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc. {sun,allegra}!---> fluke!zoro (206) 356-6264 {ucbvax,hplabs}!lbl-csam!--/