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"For example, his big programs TeX (1982) and METAFONT (1984) are each book-length and the source code of each is in a single large file amounting to about 2000
by mcguire 7y ago
"For example, his big programs TeX (1982) and METAFONT (1984) are each book-length and the source code of each is in a single large file amounting to about 20000+ lines of Pascal code."
He also used six-character identifiers. He had to. TeX and Metafont were intended to be compiled by lowest common denominator Pascal compilers. Modules, etc., were all vendor specific extensions at the time.
One might consider that to be good engineering.
"If you cut across the Saturn-B moon rocket, you find only an external skin which is at the same time a structural component and the tank wall."
Soda cans and plastic water bottles are the same; it's how they are cheap enough to be fit for for purpose.
- svat 7y agoAgreed; I just didn't want to continue arguing with myself and post a counterpoint to the counterpoint; glad others are doing it :-) (Actually I posted a comment along the same lines in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22409822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22409822) BTW one of the features of WEB is/was that it allows arbitrary-length macro names, which mitigates against the Pascal requirement that only the first 8 letters of identifiers count: https://texdoc.net/pkg/webman https://texdoc.net/pkg/webman)