thomas@qut.edu.au (04/20/91)
In article <jls.671858932@rutabaga>, jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: > 2) The history of software engineering has been more profoundly warped > by the simple fact that most programmers are only hunt-and-peck > typists than by anything else. This explains constricted identifier > names and an emphasis on notational compaction at the expense of > understandability. > > Corollary: the term "verbose", applied to a programming language, > is COMPLIMENTARY, not perjorative. I AM NOT entering the language wars!!! (Please re-read the previous sentence.) I personally have problems with both C (C++) and Ada. I disagree greatly with the above stated corollary. Verbose programs (not languages) are as unreadable as terse programs. I will trash a student's assignment more harshly if it is overly verbose rather than if it is too terse. The key to maintainability is CONCISE and COMPLETE documentation. Verbosity just frustrates the maintainer and usually causes them to skip over the code rather than reading it. Au revoir, @~~Richard Thomas aka. The AppleByter -- The Misplaced Canadian~~~~@ { AARNet: richard@water.fit.qut.edu.au InterNet: R.Thomas@qut.edu.au } { PSI: PSI%505272223015::R.Thomas } @~~School of Computing Science - Queensland University of Technology~~@
marc@dumbcat.sf.ca.us (Marco S Hyman) (05/19/91)
In article <1991May16.172129.14877@ap542.uucp> david@ap542.uucp writes: > You must think about the poor slobs who come after. I sure as hell > don't want to spend my life maintaining something I developed. I > would much rather make it so simple, so easy to understand, that > ANYBODY can figure out what I did. So they don't ask me silly > questions. But David, a programming language is not enough. While your "dream" language, whatever it may be, will make _what_ you did readable and easy to understand it still wont explain _why_ you did it. Unless your using a form of literate programming. When going through someone's code the question I always want to ask is "why did you do it this way and not that way?". Sometimes there's a reason. // marc -- // home: marc@dumbcat.sf.ca.us pacbell!dumbcat!marc // work: marc@ascend.com uunet!aria!marc