[racket] OFFTOPIC - Quote on Programming

I forget where that quotation came from originally, but it antedated the 
days where internal documentation was the norm.

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 06:20:57AM +0100, Jos Koot wrote:
> Well, that may depend on how you define "clever code". Surely it is clever
> to write well documented code that can easily be understood, debugged,
> maintained and reused by yourself and by others. 

The "clever" refers to cleverness merely in producing a foemalism that 
appears to work.

> Understanding may require
> knowledge of the discipline the code is written for, of course. In my
> opinion it helps a lot first finishing the documentation and the design
> (both user and 'inside' docs) before starting coding.

You're talking about metacleverness -- the know-yourself kind of 
cleverness that acknowledges your own limitations and take them into 
account.

> With good and well
> described design it is even possible to leave the coding to another person,
> just like an architect designs a building and constructors build it.
> My 2c, Jos

I've never found it to be feasible to leave the coding to another 
person, except in cases where the remaining coding is so trivial that a 
machine could do it.

[ In which case it makes sense to use a compiler.  :-) ]

-- hendrik
> 
> From: users-bounces at racket-lang.org [mailto:users-bounces at racket-lang.org]
> On Behalf Of Harry Spier
> Sent: martes, 19 de marzo de 2013 2:56
> To: users
> Subject: [racket] OFFTOPIC - Quote on Programming
> 
> 
> I found this quote on a blog and couldn't help sharing it :-)
> 
> 
> "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
> Therefore if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are by
> definition not smart enough to debug it." Brian Kernigan
> 

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