22 Nov
2011
22 Nov
'11
5:06 p.m.
On 23/11/2011, at 7:51 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
You must have a much better memory than most people. My experience, which matches that
of every programmer I've spoken to about this, is that any code I wrote but last
looked more than three years ago takes very nearly as much effort to understand as code of
comparable quality by another author but which I've never seen before.
I've got code sitting on a shelf in my study that I wrote nearly 40 years ago. Just
for interest's sake I thought I'd see if I could understand it - the answer is no,
mainly as I can't really read PDP-10 assembler any more :-(
I looked at some slightly later stuff (probably 35 years old) written in BCPL - I can read
and understand it but don't know why I wrote it that way. I guess I've learnt
something about algorithms in the intervening time!
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"