[racket] OFFTOPIC - Quote on Programming

My experience is the same. But try to explain to a program or project manager that at least four things gradually change to complete a project: design, code, tests, and docs. I am no longer expecting to ever work on a project where the leaders do not insist each of those is a milestone completed in some exact order that was preconceived by someone who never finished a good project.

rac

On Mar 19, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Patrick Li wrote:

> My personal experience is that a good and detailed design is hard to
> get to *without* doing the coding.
>  -Patrick
> 
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Jos Koot <jos.koot at gmail.com> wrote:
>> One remark down intermixed in your email.
>> Jos
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: users-bounces at racket-lang.org
>>> [mailto:users-bounces at racket-lang.org] On Behalf Of Hendrik Boom
>>> Sent: martes, 19 de marzo de 2013 15:15
>>> To: users at racket-lang.org
>>> Subject: Re: [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.
>> 
>> I have experienced some good things leaving the coding to others. I think
>> that in some cases a good and detailed design makes coding almost trivial.
>> 
>>> 
>>> [ 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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