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Yes, I understand. In highly procedural code the unprincipled combination of functions results in layers of indirection which do not make the code any easier to

Yes, I understand. In highly procedural code the unprincipled combination of functions results in layers of indirection which do not make the code any easier to understand. It requires discipline to achieve what I call here, principled combination: that the combination of functions follow certain laws like they do in mathematics. In many programming languages it requires discipline because the type systems and the programming languages are not constructed in such a way as to uphold these laws for you. You, the programmer, have to enforce these laws on your code. That is why, when I'm writing something in C, I will some times prototype my design in a higher-level language first and translate that into C code. The higher level language is more principled and helps me catch errors in the design and development stage before I've made a mess of things. I don't always do it that way but it tends to work the best when I can get it to.

wruza 4y ago
Yeah, I used to do that (not always) too. Either prototypes or high-level design documents full of pseudocode and interoperating modules. But what kills the whole idea is that our tools do not support such structures in any way. They are completely blind to this. People praise typed languages, but honestly I’m much more okay with dynamic typing than with the lack of beams and pillars for design, to do any of it. It’s very easy to lose yourself for an hour and start creating a mess in what you have planned for weeks, simply because your attention was elsewhere, there was a deadline or new goals were incompatible with current ideas and you had no clue how to marry them correctly (nor courage to begin) within a timeframe available. Add a couple of developers who aren’t you and/or switch into another project for a month or two – and it’s a recipe for a mudball. I used to believe in all that, not anymore. May be a bold claim, but most projects aren’t even hard enough to require it. I remember my own past experience and can tell that all that division into layers, concerns, etc was not a requirement nor an enhancement. I was simply ticking boxes in a “how clever do you feel this week” form. Days of work to spare five pages of clear actual instructions which could have been typed and tested in under few hours, shipped next evening and – much more importantly – I could reenter that context in few minutes after a year off, in contrast to any to-be-mudball.

wruza 4y ago

Yeah, I used to do that (not always) too. Either prototypes or high-level design documents full of pseudocode and interoperating modules. But what kills the whole idea is that our tools do not support such structures in any way. They are completely blind to this. People praise typed languages, but honestly I’m much more okay with dynamic typing than with the lack of beams and pillars for design, to do any of it. It’s very easy to lose yourself for an hour and start creating a mess in what you have planned for weeks, simply because your attention was elsewhere, there was a deadline or new goals were incompatible with current ideas and you had no clue how to marry them correctly (nor courage to begin) within a timeframe available. Add a couple of developers who aren’t you and/or switch into another project for a month or two – and it’s a recipe for a mudball. I used to believe in all that, not anymore. May be a bold claim, but most projects aren’t even hard enough to require it. I remember my own past experience and can tell that all that division into layers, concerns, etc was not a requirement nor an enhancement. I was simply ticking boxes in a “how clever do you feel this week” form. Days of work to spare five pages of clear actual instructions which could have been typed and tested in under few hours, shipped next evening and – much more importantly – I could reenter that context in few minutes after a year off, in contrast to any to-be-mudball.