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From: Preben Randhol <randhol+valid_for_reply_from_news@pvv.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Clause "with and use"
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 11:22:50 +0000 (UTC)
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On 2003-11-04, Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com> wrote:
> It always "sounds reasonable" - but is it backed up with any *data*? I 
> believe the claim because it is reasonable, but obviously, there are 
> folks who think that "economy of expression" is the bees knees. Hence 
> the strong devotion to cryptic C programming. If you seek to persuade 
> that crowd, some data to back up the claim would help.

Sure data are nice and I haven't read the article. However, it has little
to do with computer science. This is study of the human brain and
perception. So comparing it to microchips is not very interesting I
think. However, I find that if I read a book that is well written and
clear on a subject it is easier and faster to comprehend the content.
For a book which uses a lot of implicit rules and theories it takes
longer to graph the content.

I remember when I was a student that some of the books were a nightmare
as it did:

      From eq (1) we have

      equation (1)

      this gives eq:

      equation (2)

where (1) and (2) had a lot of implicit calculations etc...

while it could be written of explained on the blackboards as:

      equation (1)
      equation (1.1)
      equation (1.2)
      equation (1.3)
      equation (1.4)
      equation (1.5)

and then finally

      equation (2)

However, in which of the two cases you learn more can be debated. It can
be said that in the first case, if you take your time, you will
probably learn better by doing all the implied calculations. On the
other hand it can also be said that it is not likely that on do take the
time / have the time to one would learn more by looking over the
calculations between (1) and (2) and understand the progress.

I'm sure that there are studies on this, but that you have to look
outside your field for them.

Consider:

[1.1]

   if calc_value (some_arg) = True then
      --
   else
      --
   end if;

to

[1.2]

   if calc_value (some_arg) then
      --
   else
      --
   end if;

or

[2.1]

   if done = ture then
      --
   end if;

to

[2.2]

   if done then
      --
   end if;

I would say that in some cases [1.1] be more readable
that [1.2], but that [2.2] is more readable than [2.1]

[3.1]

   if not calc_value (some_arg) then

[3.2]

   if calc_value (some_arg) = False then

And I would say [3.2] is much more readable than [3.1].




-- 
"Saving keystrokes is the job of the text editor, not the programming
 language."