Re: Paying developers to get features faster

From: Jean-David Beyer (j_at_d.b)
Date: 01/23/04 

Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:30:46 -0500

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <hqnu00d3tutt87k080f5cepfc85kopl9ii@4ax.com>, on 01/22/2004
> at 06:31 PM, Steve Holdoway <steve@itemfront.ltd.uk> said:
>
>
>>a) demanded a comment per line of code
>
>
> When I taught programming, I told me students that I would take off
> points for any comment that did not contribute to understanding the
> program.
>
>
>>b) demanded flow charts for all functionality.
>
>
> Oh does that bring back memories. Some code is best described with a
> decision table, and some code is table driven. A flowchart for such
> code would serve only to confuse the reader.
>

Can you imagine the flowchart for the lexical analyzer of a compiler
when it is built with a transition matrix as described by Samelson and
Bauer*? There is a column for every state the compiler can be in (and
the state is the top of a state stack), and a row for every class of
input character. They can be pretty big. So the flow is into this box
with two integer variables, the state (from the top of the state stack)
and the class of the current input character (table-lookup over the
entire input alphabet). That box of the flowchart would look like a
caterpillar with the number of legs equal to the number of states
multiplied by the number of input classes. Now each intersection of
(state, class) is a subroutine call that can do anything (advance the
parse, change state, invoke an error handler that knows pretty well what
went wrong (input class invalid in this state), push a character back
onto the input, or anything else)...

_____
* Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 3 , Issue 2 (February 1960)
Pages: 76 - 83
Year of Publication: 1960
ISSN:0001-0782
Authors
K. Samelson Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz, Germany
F. L. Bauer Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz, Germany
Publisher
ACM Press New York, NY, USA 

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Paying developers to get features faster
    ... > When I taught programming, I told me students that I would take off ... Can you imagine the flowchart for the lexical analyzer of a compiler ... and the class of the current input character (table-lookup over the ... K. Samelson Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz, Germany ...
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