On Thu, 2004-03-11 at 18:58, Steve Holdoway wrote: <snip> > Five lines is extreme, yes. But you've obviously not tried this method > of programming. If you do a top down design, and then a bottom up > implementation, these functions become the building blocks of the > higher level code. Not only that, you can rely absolutely on them once > you've completed them, which makes the higher level code much easier > to debug, and much more reliable when written.
I *have* tried programming like that and initially, I have to admit, that it started to look like those promises would be fulfilled but alas no. > I know that your friend and mine BillWithTheGlasses has done his best > to eradicate the design and analysis part of any project, but it does > make for a far more robust and maintainable product. The part that I dispute the most is the maintainability. When you have a respectable sized project. What starts to form is a maze of hundreds of tiny little functions all forming a call tree dozens of layers deep. In a debugger the call stack looks like a directory listing! Trying to track down what function/method is doing the thing you're trying to stop or change can be a nightmare. I am certainly an advocate for simple and elegant code but extremism with function size IMO is something that should be avoided. Sometimes a great big central function is a simpler option to a cascade of tiny little ones. -- ---------------------------------------------------- Regards, Zane Gilmore (Linux nerd since 1998) ____________________________________________________ Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.:- A.C.Clark ____________________________________________________
