Re: Writing, Coding, and Professionals

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:13:09 GMT, anton@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Anton Ertl) wrote:

>For most programs a complete specification is never written, so it
>would certainly be an improvement if it was.  However, I don't see why
>it should be in the comments.  Ok, an advantage would be that it would
>be more likely to be updated when the requirements change (rather than
>just updating the code).

MPE uses literate programming of a sort for all our code. While I
agree that specs for applications are rare these days, the comments
for a word can easily be the specification for that word. Our 
experience is that writing the spec for a word first reduces bugs
and improves maintenance costs and time.

>But OTOH interspersing the spec with code
>and structuring it in the same way as the code makes it harder to
>understand.

Putting design information into source code is a very good thing!

The mistake most people make is to assume that do***entation is
done afterwards. Doing it as part of the coding process saves time
and money in the long term.

We have recently assisted in the progress of an application based
on a 20 year-old MPE Forth. The application itself is 17+ years
old on that chassis, and had a previous chassis. How I wish that
it had been do***ented the way we do it now!

Stephen

-- 
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com
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