Re: Coding practices

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 3:46 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> If you want an example of reasonable documenting and coding practice,
>>> take tex.web (it is public domain), run it through weave and pdftex
>>> and peruse significant extracts of the resulting PDF.
>>
>> While tex.web is a beautiful example of literate programming, it was
>>
>> a. created by one the worlds' foremost computer scientists.
>
> Well, that's like calling St. Paul one of the worlds' foremost popes.
> I don't see that as a disqualifying factor.  His Pascal coding is
> definitely not more obfuscate than LilyPond on average.

"I'm making a mess of my drawings, how should I organize my work?"

"well, just have a look at DaVinci's sketches."

they are certainly an example, but it's not much by way of practical advice.

>> I think that looking at tex.web will not give anyone practical answers
>> on how to structure their lilypond code.
>
> I was talking about "reasonable documenting and coding practice".  That
> does not involve how to structure things.  As I said, we are talking
> about post-1960s Pascal coding, and he tried his best to still present
> things in a structured way, in well-documented meaningful chunks.
>
> Nowadays we have much more modular programming languages, and we make a
> mess of it.  I consider doing good work with bad tools a better example
> than doing bad work with good tools.

What is your practical advice for coding practices, then?

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen