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From: Bob Crispen <revbob@EIGHT-BALL.HV.BOEING.COM>
Subject: Re: Hungarian notation
Date: 1996/06/10
Message-ID: <9606101516.AA27033@eight-ball>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 159548890
sender: Ada programming language <INFO-ADA@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU>
comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
x-ph: V4.4@jericho.american.edu
Date: 1996-06-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok@GOANNA.CS.RMIT.EDU.AU> sez:

>z007400b@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us (Ralph Silverman) writes:
>>       why not major in
>>               hegelian metaphysics
>>       or
>>               creative writing (modern poetry)
>
>For many students, the literally correct answer is "because a major in
>creative writing is not a meal ticket, but a major in computing is."
>
>Dijkstra once wrote that the two prerequisites for becoming a good
>programmer were
>    - a propensity (my word, not his) for mathematics
>    - mastery of ones native language.

Charles Moore, the inventor of the epitome of write-only languages
(Forth) said "The one tool every programmer must have on his desktop
is a thesaurus."  Perhaps Forth is readable, and we've just been using
bad symbolic names. ;-)

The current Scientific American reports results on a study of Alzheimer's
disease among a group of nuns.  The finding was that those nuns who had
as early in life as age 20 written in short, less connected sentences had
a significantly higher probability than those nuns who wrote longer,
more narrative-like sentences of getting Alzheimers in old age.

I immediately thought of nursing homes filled to overflowing with
engineers.

I despair at examples like:

>   if Value in Limit_1 .. Limit_2 then         if Limit_2 >= Limit_1 and
>      -- note possibility of null range           Value   >= Limit_1 and
>      -- [ see LRM 3.5(4) & 4.5.2(27-32) ]        Value   <= Limit_2   then

and will now use them in place of the standard example of bad commenting:

        LDA     #1      Move a '1' to register A

What's next?

        procedure Foo is
        --
        -- procedure (pro-CE-dure) n., a thingy that procedes

Bob Crispen
revbob@eight-ball.hv.boeing.com
Speaking for myself, not my company