Re: Avoiding side effects and other dogma.

["(see below)" <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk>]

On 14/10/2008 07:22, in article u8wsrwv9j.fsf_-_@no.email.thanks.invalid,
"Anders Wirzenius" <anders@no.email.thanks.invalid> wrote:

> "(see below)" <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
...
>> What is silly is tying yourself in knots to avoid a perfectly sensible way
>> of doing something, because it is abominated by the adherents of a dogma.
>> 
>> The trouble is that bright people (Dijkstra, Hoare, Dahl, etc) offer
>> recommendations for general approaches, to be applied with common sense; but
>> then their much dimmer followers turn the recommendations into religions.
>> 
>> I encountered this a lot as a teacher. I remember giving a lecture on memory
>> management techniques and being confronted at the end by one a student who
>> demanded that I should say which was "the best". When I explained it was not
>> possible to do that, he insisted that I really knew which was the best and
>> was keeping the secret to myself.
>> 
>> Too many software practitioners (among many others) have that mindset.
> 
> As a teacher you may then be familiar with the difference between
> "wanting to learn" and "programming for production". To me it is a
> good technique to "strive for perfection" if you use that as a
> tool for learning something about a subject.
> You may write a program using a goto whenever you have a need for
> jumping somewhere and after that write another version of the
> program without a single goto. And then write a third version
> adopting yet another dogma. The three versions are useless once
> you have made up your mind about the consequences of adopting
> different principles. You throw those versions in the recycle bin
> and start to write the "common sense" adopted program
> version. And keep that.

That's fine: it directly contradicts the idea that there is precisely one
"correct" way to do everything, and that pernicious idea is what I condemn.

-- 
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk