21 Nov
2011
21 Nov
'11
4:50 a.m.
On 21/11/11 1:03 AM, Sean Conner wrote:
It was thus said that the Great Toby Thain once
stated:
It is not clear how that suddenly implies that programmers need not
write *about* their code. Au contraire, I would argue that it puts even
*more* pressure on explanations and design documents.
On 20/11/11 9:27 PM, Sean Conner wrote:
My point is that software changes. ... It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once
stated:
That's the point. It's MEANT to be, because "regular programming" is
where code goes to die. >> these don't seem to have impaired
their reliability,
>> performance, or sheer longevity: Being the 30-year de facto standard in
>> academic publishing.
>
> That's because practically noone can understand it besides Knuth, which
> is why noone has been changing it. Software that doesn't change
> doesn't have bugs introduced into it.
Hang on a second. Even if you don't like litterate programming, the fact
remains that the source code of TeX (and Metafont) is avaialble, as is an
explanation of what is going on. If there were serious bugs in it then
sombody who have fixed them by now.
I've read up on literate programming (I even own a copy of "Literate
Programming" by Knuth) but even so, I never liked the idea all that much,
because it seems even *more* work than regular programming.
TeX hasn't changed. Once written, the only changes have been the (very)
occasional error. It wasn't an entire section scrapped (that we know of)
because of a change in requirements.
It went through one total rewrite (just like the modern systems you
describe).
And yes, the project I've been working on is working; it's now in
production and frankly, no bugs have been found---or rather, yes, bugs
*have* been found, but on the vendor's network that were never documented
nor mentioned to us, and thus, we had to work around those particular
issues.
Where did you write down all the information about those bugs and the
workarounds, or are you carrying it in your head?
Should we use literate programming? Frankly, we have some great
programmers; what we don't have are great writers.
The skills are not so widely separated. The great computer scientists
(whatever one's opinion of their programs) have, by and large, been
great writers*. And, to restate the case we have been making, the
ability to write clearly is not necessarily a dispensable part of the
job (and moreso, if a good part of the job is necessarily going to be to
educate co-workers?).
If you still doubt the Siamese connection between the ability to write
well and the ability to code well, then please read The Elements of
Programming Style before we continue this discussion.
--T
That may be asking too
much.
-spc (Also, the intended audience for our work is ourselves (right now,
five programmers total) and we don't license or give out the code.
Too small an audience to write a series of novels, frankly ... )
* - List on request.
? -
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