Bjorn, >> At the last ACCU conference I gave a talk one of whose conclusions >> was that people were not adapted to continually thinking up new ideas >> and that developers should attempt to use a small set of constructs >> without having to consciously think about them > >Derek, I am not entirely sure that I understand what you mean. First, >isn't this already widely practiced?
I suspect that experienced programs do write a lot of code without spending a lot of time thinking about it. However, the idea of writing without conscious thought goes against current thinking on how software should be written. > We have programming idioms, >design patterns, refactoring, frameworks, heuristics, etc. Second, Idioms are at the root of the proposal. The ones you mention are at a higher level than the ones I was proposing as candidates for unconscious use. >while I do not disagree with the recommendation to use such constructs, >doesn't this advice depend heavily on the problem at hand, and in >particular on prior experience with the problem domain? I think that common usage of 'low level' constructs, e.g., for statements, is common across all application domains. I suspect that there is a lot of commonality of higher level constructs across application domains (I think people tend to focus in on the differences and ignore the commonalities), but I have no usage measurements. derek -- Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
