Maybe not. If there is enough information about different modules' capabilities, suitability for solving various problems and requirements, such that the required "glue" can be generated or configured automatically at run time. Then what is left is the input to such a generator or configurator. At some level of abstraction the input should transition from being glue and better be described as design. Design could be seen as kind of a gray area if thought of mainly as picking what to glue together as it still involves a significant amount of gluing ;) But even design should be possible to formalize enough to minimize the amount of actual design decisions required to encode in the source and what decisions to leave to algorithms though. So what's left is to encode the requirements as input to the designer. In my mind "powerful languages" thus means 98% requirements, 2% design and 0% glue. BR John Den 17 apr 2013 05:04 skrev "Miles Fidelman" <[email protected]>:
> So let's ask the obvious question, if we have powerful languages, and/or > powerful libraries, is not an application comprised primarily of glue code > that ties all the "piece parts" together in an application-specific way? > > David Barbour wrote: > >> >> On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Steve Wart <[email protected] <mailto: >> [email protected]>> wrote: >> >> > On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Gath-Gealaich >> > In real systems, 90% of code (conservatively) is glue code. >> >> What is the origin of this claim? >> >> >> I claimed it from observation and experience. But I'm sure there are >> other people who have claimed it, too. Do you doubt its veracity? >> >> >> >> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 12:15 PM, David Barbour >> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> >> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 11:57 AM, David Barbour >> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> >> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Loup Vaillant-David >> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 04:17:48PM -0700, David >> Barbour wrote: >> > On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Gath-Gealaich >> > In real systems, 90% of code (conservatively) is >> glue code. >> >> Does this *have* to be the case? Real systems also >> use C++ (or >> Java). Better languages may require less glue, (even >> if they require >> just as much core logic). >> >> >> Yes. >> >> The prevalence of glue code is a natural consequence of >> combinatorial effects. E.g. there are many ways to >> partition and summarize properties into data-structures. >> Unless we uniformly make the same decisions - and we won't >> (due to context-dependent variations in convenience or >> performance) - then we will eventually have many >> heterogeneous data models. Similarly can be said of event >> models. >> >> We can't avoid this problem. At best, we can delay it a >> little. >> >> >> I should clarify: a potential answer to the glue-code issue is >> to *infer* much more of it, i.e. auto-wiring, constraint >> models, searches. We could automatically build pipelines that >> convert one type to another, given smaller steps (though this >> does risk aggregate lossiness due to intermediate summaries or >> subtle incompatibilities). Machine-learning could be >> leveraged to find correspondences between structures, perhaps >> aiding humans. 90% or more of code will be glue-code, but it >> doesn't all need to be hand-written. I am certainly pursuing >> such techniques in my current language development. >> >> >> ______________________________**_________________ >> fonc mailing list >> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >> >> http://vpri.org/mailman/**listinfo/fonc<http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc> >> >> >> >> ______________________________**_________________ >> fonc mailing list >> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >> >> http://vpri.org/mailman/**listinfo/fonc<http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc> >> >> >> >> >> ______________________________**_________________ >> fonc mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://vpri.org/mailman/**listinfo/fonc<http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc> >> > > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > > ______________________________**_________________ > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/**listinfo/fonc<http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc> >
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