clipka wrote:
> Darren New schrieb:
> 
>> Or take something like a big windowing system, or a 3D graphics 
>> system, or a physics library, and try to document *just* the routines 
>> without documenting the architecture of the system.  You'll spend 
>> three days trying to find out where to start reading the documentation.
> 
> You mean, like the Windows API documentation? :-P

Exactly. That's why there are classes and books on programming with the 
Windows API. You can read IDispatch all you want, and if you don't know what 
COM *is*, it's going to be meaningless.

Thing is, see, people who are writing the code know this before they write 
the code. Nobody sits down, typing C code, and then says "Wow, look, it 
turns out it's a web server!"

Now, what can you do with a programming language to make it easier to save 
that sort of thing with the code than to throw it away when you're done?

Here's another example: There's a thing in Blender (I forget what, actually, 
maybe the fluid simulation) where third parties were trying to document how 
it worked. The author added it, submitted the code patch, but didn't say 
what any of the parameters meant or how to use it. People trying to write 
the documentation were saying "whoever wrote this, can you send me the files 
you used to test it? You must have tested it,b ecause it works, and it'll 
help me write documentation if I can see what you tested it with."  Such a 
thing wouldn't happen if there was a language with TDD built in, for 
example. Something where a procedure declaration included test-case 
declarations inside it, or where the only way to write a procedure is to 
include it inside a test case, for example.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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