Was FORTRAN buggy 4314

On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 21:09:03 -0400 in alt.folklore.computers, krw

My bugbear is the consistently low level of abstraction: a lot of code is written using dozens to hundreds of calls to short low level functions. OOP seems to encourage low level ADT like abstraction of that sort, without any sense of where the code is going eventually, or how it's gonig to get there. One lesson I took from Nik Wirth was operating at different levels of abstraction: do each job within a body of code in terms that make sense within that job, and don't mix low level code (effectively housekeeping from the higher level point of view) in with high level code, which should be about how you are getting the job done for the end user; push the housekeeping down to a level that takes care of doing the lowest level details, and you're less likely to screw up the coordination of doing those details the right way at the right time.

Nice coin! Would that make your nickname Keith Nigh or Keith NIH? I kind of like that stuff: I'm not much of a debugger in my own opinion, but I've always loved untangling and cleaning up disastrous, awful messes, often using drastic means that terrify other team members and leaders; my motto on those jobs was always: "No guts, no glory!"

-- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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