In the Simple-Made-Easy talk Rich raises the question of long term use. In particular, he mentions the issue of maintenance and change.
In order to change software you need to understand the program. Unfortunately most people equate "understanding the program" as being equivalent to "what the function does". What it also has to mean is "why the function does it". In order to write a program that "lives", that is, one that can be maintained and changed you need to capture why the code exists and why it is written that way. The best solution I have found is called Literate Programming. The LP idea is that you write the program for the programmer rather than the machine. You should be able to sit and read a book that explains the program, including the "why". The real code is in the document but the text explaining the program is the focus. I would encourage you to look at Lisp in Small Pieces. It is a literate program, a book, that contains a complete lisp system with the interpreter and compiler but it is written to be read. Tim Daly "The hardest part of literate programming is the documentation" On Thu, 2011-10-20 at 09:01 -0700, Alex Miller wrote: > The video is up: > > http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy > > Places to watch for comments (or vote if you like): > > - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3135185 > - > http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lirke/simple_made_easy_by_rich_hickey_video/ > - http://www.dzone.com/links/simple_made_easy_by_rich_hickey.html > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
