I recognized the name Gerald Weinberg in the intro, author of The Psychology of Computer Programming. The other names cited (Plum and Geller) weren’t familiar, turns out they published together a few times, notably on IF-THEN-ELSE considered harmful this same year, arguing for more and more extensible control structures (though I don’t know enough history to tell which of these are newly proposed).
I was struck by how strongly the film recommends longer, readable names. It’s 10 years older than I am, and I’ve rarely seen code from this era, but it’s always been my impression that unreadable short names were how it “used to” be done, and it’s a modern luxury to not have to worry about them taking space in printouts or against strict column limits, especially with autocomplete. It’s long been recommended, if rarely observed (and occasionally overused).
We’re using this blended language to show the principles of well-structured programming are not language-dependant.
Interesting way to make this general point.
It’s a shame, isn’t it, that our language won’t let the computer read our indentation, but that can’t be helped.
Great point here about the redundant information in the indentation being potentially misleading. One of the reasons I like the off-side rule, which was already long known at this time, but maybe not in a popular language?
I recognized the name Gerald Weinberg in the intro, author of The Psychology of Computer Programming. The other names cited (Plum and Geller) weren’t familiar, turns out they published together a few times, notably on IF-THEN-ELSE considered harmful this same year, arguing for more and more extensible control structures (though I don’t know enough history to tell which of these are newly proposed).
I was struck by how strongly the film recommends longer, readable names. It’s 10 years older than I am, and I’ve rarely seen code from this era, but it’s always been my impression that unreadable short names were how it “used to” be done, and it’s a modern luxury to not have to worry about them taking space in printouts or against strict column limits, especially with autocomplete. It’s long been recommended, if rarely observed (and occasionally overused).
Interesting way to make this general point.
Great point here about the redundant information in the indentation being potentially misleading. One of the reasons I like the off-side rule, which was already long known at this time, but maybe not in a popular language?