Julian Leviston wrote:
Two things spring out of this at me (inline):
On 28/02/2012, at 9:21 PM, Loup Vaillant wrote:
- Features matter more than I think they do.
- One may not expect the user to write his own features, even though
it would be relatively simple.
What about when using software becomes "writing" features - see etoys.
Is clicking and dragging tiles still "writing" software? :)
Good point. By default, I think of building software and using
software as two separate activities (though we do use software to
implement others). But if some software is built in such a way that the
default use case is to extend it, then my assumption goes right out the
window, and my objection doesn't work.
I did expect however that building software could be made much easier
than it is right now, if only because 20 Kloc can be taught before the
end of high school. Plus, some spreadsheet users already do this.
- Current systems may be not as badly written as I think they are.
- Code reuse could be harder than I think.
It's not that they're written badly, it's just that that so many years
on, no one has really understood some of the powerful ideas of
yesteryear. Even those powerful ideas allowed a certain level of
magnification... but the powerful ideas of these days in addition to the
past allow an incredibly large possibility of magnification of thought...
OK, "badly written" is probably too dismissal. What I meant was more
along the line of "right now I can do better". The thing is, I regard
the clarity and terseness of my own code as the default, While anything
worse "sucks". (I don't know if I am able to perceive when code is
better than my own.) Of course, even my own code tend to "suck" if
it's old enough.
So I know I should be more forgiving. It's just that when I see a
nested "if" instead of a conjunction, empty "else" branches, or
assignment happy interfaces, I feel the urge to deny oxygen to the
brain that produced this code.
Loup.
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