[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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