[Oberon] a module a page (keeps the mind sane)?
Frans-Pieter Vonck
fp at vonck.nl
Mon Nov 5 21:37:23 CET 2018
maybe it was an ideal Dijkstra rule.
A handwritten prove of only one page
Greets,
F.P.
John R. Strohm schreef op 2018-11-03 23:15:
> In "Psychology of Computer Programming", from the early 1970s or so,
> Weinberg reported that studies showed that programmer comprehension
> generally dropped dramatically the moment the programmer had to scroll
> the edit window or turn the page on a listing. This gave rise to the
> "one page, one module" guideline.
>
> Bob Walkden said:
>>
>> There was a very practical reason for a 'one page, one procedure' rule
>> when I started programming in the early 1980s.
>
>> I was a COBOL programmer and we did not have terminals or such
>> luxuries. Instead we wrote our code in pencil on coding sheets
>> (paper), submitted it to the data prep women (always women) and a few
>> days later received the sheets back with a paper tape version of the
>> source code which we could then attempt to compile.
>>
>> Because we practised Jackson Structured Programming we could write
>> subroutines which fit on one coding sheet and re-use the coding sheets
>> for other programs, or shuffle them, insert other code on separate
>> sheets etc as needed. Only for short, simple edits and quick compiler
>> turnaround when we had the machine to ourselves on a Tuesday evening
>> did we need to cut and paste, quite literally, the paper tape.
>>
>> Anything involving a new coding sheet would take a week, but that was
>> much easier than dealing with something monolithic which involve
>> re-pencilling numerous sheets from scratch.
>
>
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