On Feb 15, 2011, at 9:40 AM, Stephan Boettcher wrote: > DJ Delorie <d...@delorie.com> writes: > >> The two words mean two different things in the English language. > > sorry, I wasn't clear on these distinctions.
DJ has a very narrow and negative viewpoint on factoring. > > >> Refactoring means changing nonfunctional attributes of the software >> (i.e. rearranging code to be more maintainable). Way, way too narrow. Refactoring can dramatically increase the power at the users' fingertips. Consider a favorite Brian Kernighan example. Take the Multics command: how_many_users In Unix, refactor it into: who | wc -l Now, you've given the user much more power with fewer commands. For example, ls | wc -l counts files, something I recall there was no command for in Multics. The large suite of inflexible, specialized commands in Multics collapsed into a much smaller set of commands that were specialized in one sense (what abstraction was served) but generalized in another (what end was served) in Unix. This put a lot more power in users' hands: many things that would have required a page of tricky PL/I code in Multics became simple shell one-liners in Unix. It was much easier to master and remember the smaller, but more powerful, set of Unix commands. >> If we're talking >> about changing functionality (as we were in this case), we need to use >> a different word. Functionality emerges naturally from good factoring. Without good factoring, functionality requires a large number of complex "features" that are difficult to remember and often don't play well with each other. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user