Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Ping: case insensitive filesystems

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

C Y <address@hidden> writes:


[...]

| I have always thought that if we are making Axiom into literate
| documents, they should read as such - if I am looking for the pamphlet
| that describes the SPAD compiler I am interested in what it IS doing and
| what it is intended to do and why, not what it did in the past before it
| was fixed.

This type of stance is appropriate for trunk.  My experience with
workind on branches tells me that it creates troubles when it comes to
merge do merges.  But, hey the system is already largely
non-documented, so why not continue that way?  

[...]

| To take another example, I would like to see us first write the
| paper/book on WHAT the SPAD language definition is, WHY we want it that
| way, and HOW we want it to work (compilation algorithms, compiler design
| considerations, etc.). 

Yes, we just need volunteers to tackle the problem.

| In the process, we will probably learn how it
| SHOULD be done, rather than how it is done now.  The existing code will
| be very useful as a reference and some pieces might be drop in, but I
| would like to see the ideas lead the code instead of the code leading
| the ideas.

since you feel you must say that, could you explain in how you see the
codes leading the ideas in the current practice?

| In such a paradigm, what the old code was doing is less important than
| the question of do we have code that does the right thing? 

Explainingg why the new code is right implies one needs to understand
what the old code is doing and why it is wrong.  In that respect, it
is just as important as the why of new code.

-- Gaby