Re: Elegant code Was: Re: what kind of non microconroller app are

On 21 Apr, 18:42, Elizabeth D Rather <erat...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Jonah Thomas wrote:
>
> ...
>
> > People say it works for Chuck Moore. He writes lots of routines that
are=

> > a line or two each. Simple, clear, powerful. It does 90% of what you'd
> > want it to, and the other 10% isn't needed. If it's true that 10% of
the=

> > specs generate 90% of the complexity and that 10% isn't really
> > needed.... People say Chuck is the best at using Forth. I'd like to be
> > better at it than I am. What does Chuck do that I don't do? What do I
do=

> > that I shouldn't?
> >...
>
> Understanding that your percentages here are entirely rhetorical, I
> think you're on the right track. =A0The big difference between Chuck and
a=

> lot of folks here is that he only solves the particular problem at hand
> -- he is never groping for a general solution. =A0He would never say, "I
> need a better string handling package." =A0Instead, confronted with a
> particular string challenge, he'd find the most direct way of dealing
> with it. =A0If he is working on an application full of strings, he'd
find
> ways to deal with its specific issues, and factor some of the common
> needs into reusable definitions, but he would never be searching for
> either "general purpose" functions or attempting to replicate what some
> other language did.
>
> Whether this is good or bad, I can't say... but if you ask "What does
> Chuck do that I don't do?" that's the answer.
>

Yes different approaches to getting the job done. Earlier in this
thread I was effectively apologising for the BNF to Gray format
converter being a bit complicated but on thinking about it I don't
think it is really. To build this converter, which is an off-line
tool, I used:
- some library code to provide memory buffers
- an off-line tool (LexGen) to generate transition tables for a
lexical scanner
- library code for the lexical scanner
- another tool (Gray) for the parser generator

and then wrote higher level code to tie it together and make it all
work.

Contrast this with the typical Forther approach of doing the whole
thing from scratch, e.g. Jonah developing code for text recognition -
a problem that is already solved by a general purpose lexical scanner.
This of course results in more concise source code, faster code etc.
but probably takes longer to develop.

Which is the best approach, I don't know, I suppose it depends on your
point of view, but I know which I prefer.

Gerry