Re: Damnit Jim, I'm a Writer, not a Programmer II: The Wrath of K ahn

[Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- jci -dot- com]

>for you non-programmers. try to decipher the meaning of a statement such
>as
>
>fprintf(urt, "%f.6 %s " , dr, (i=0;1+%r\d;++i));
>
>Without a basic understanding of the language, few could tell whether I
>have made a syntax error, never mind the meaning.

Cute, but hardly relevant. Even so, there was one writer bold enough to
make a guess in a public forum that was substantially correct.

More relevant would have been a passage of code. Context is where meaning
lies. I was peaking of gleaning the meaning of a coded procedure, perhaps
an entire function. If I were to feed you a single sentence from "Old Man
and the Sea" it would hardly be enough for you to obtain the gist of
several pages.

A single statement, like the one presented above (love to see a longer
excerpt including the above, BTW, to see the context in which that, ahem,
fragment does its work ;{>}) is enough to test a high level of
comprehension of the specific language, but hardly serves in the ability to
gather a rough meaning from a passage.

Here's what I was talking about: You scan down the page and you see
avariable called "GDevice" on the left side of an equation, with "GetPort(
somethingorothercompletelyundetermined )" on the other side. You collect
other similar facts about the equations you see as you go down the page.
You know "+", for example, is add, so when you encounter "++i" you know
there's some kind of addition going on here. You don't need to know
precisely what kind (OK, if you must know, you're adding one to i before
continuing on) just that it's happening.

As a TW, you don't always need to know precisely what the code you're
seeing is doing; just a general idea of what's happening. If you knew it
precisely, you would probably be writing *it* rather than english (or
whichever human language you're producing). You put together the pieces you
recognize and form an impression of what's happening here. Is it as good an
impression as a coder's? Don't be silly. But it doesn't have to be.

Go ahead, try reading some of the code your professional coders produce.
Try it; you might like it.

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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In God we trust; all others must provide data.
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Opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
If JCI had an opinion on this, they'd hire someone else to deliver it.


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