Hi
On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, John Carter wrote:
Ah... but putting on my mathematician hat for awhile.... you can
fairly mechanistically transform any program with N state machines
into a program with N threads, no state machines and no
gotos.
The pendulum swings one way, then another.
they used to say, " use gotos"
now they say, "don't use gotos"
I read an interesting comment on gotos,
http://kerneltrap.org/node/553/2131
where Linus Torvals explains some of the motivations to use gotos.
The pendulum swung towards threads, not processes. They said, "use
threads, not processes". John argues it is now
swinging to "use processes - not threads".
Whichever approach you use, it does not matter as long as the code is
readable and maintainable. If it is maintainable, people will work on it
and add to the project.
On that one - I don't ever see the pendulum swing away.
As a colleague argues, code spends most of its life in the develop and
maintain phases. Since the initial writing bit is only a tiny fraction of
the total life cycle, why waste time (long term) by writing hard to
maintain code?
Derek.
--
Derek Smithies Ph.D.
IndraNet Technologies Ltd.
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph +64 3 365 6485
Web: http://www.indranet-technologies.com/
