John, That's true, but the design pattern book as valuable as it is is not a critical analysis of a particular piece of software. Nothing wrong with that of course just that it would be fascinating to see more analysis of individual programmes; not just code, but the design process, the ideas behind it. Ultimately, that's what literary analysis tries to do...
Regards, Iian Sent from my iPhone On 02/12/2012, at 8:07 PM, John Nilsson <[email protected]> wrote: > Isn't the pattern language literature exactly that? An effort to typeset and > edit interesting design artifacts. > > BR > John > > Den 2 dec 2012 10:30 skrev "Iian Neill" <[email protected]>: > Benoit, > > I would very much like to read source code more often, as I suspect would > many others, but I think the problem lies in the fact that few coders or > publishers seem to think that code is worth studying. I know that sounds > outrageous but the simple fact is that there are many intellectual artefacts > as difficult as source code that are published and read avidly - e.g., > scientific articles, mathematical proofs, philosophical essays, musicological > analysis, poetry, etc. in these fields publication is considered essential to > the culture and energy and creativity is found to typeset and edit these > artefacts. In programming, the written analysis of programme design only ever > seems to happen in computer science textbooks, such as SICP, etc. > > I am often curious enough to look at the source code of some library, but are > usually discouraged by the lack of organisation in the presentation. Object > oriented code is particularly hard to get a handle on, compared to structured > programme examples in textbooks, as there an awful lot of boilerplate that > obscures the architecture. Technical documentation seems to be the only way > to get a mental map but it is often a dry overview that fails to capture the > thought process that went into the design. Sometimes I'm lead to the > melancholy conclusion that programme analysis -- I mean analysis in the sense > of a critical analysis of poetry (like William Empson's) or of art (like John > Ruskin or Kenneth Clark) -- isn't done because the programmer and the > community thinks of the code artefacts as obscolescent -- i.e., it will be > out of date soon, so why bother. Why else no serious critical activity > devoted to such a serious mental activity? Where are the software critics? > > Regards, > Iian > > Sent from my iPhone > > On 02/12/2012, at 11:41 AM, Benoît Fleury <[email protected]> wrote: > > > "Although programming is a discipline with a very large canon of > > existing work to draw from, the only code most programmers read is the > > code they maintain." > > > > This topic came up a few times on this mailing list so I thought I > > would share this talk I found interesting. > > > > https://yow.eventer.com/yow-2012-1012/cool-code-by-kevlin-henney-1181 > > > > - Benoit > > _______________________________________________ > > fonc mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
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