[PRL] Fwd: Three Schools of Expression

[Matthias Felleisen]

Perhaps it's all an issue of bad IDEs. Imagine an IDE that completes  
variable names for you, based on on-line lexical and type analysis.  
Now imagine an IDE that automatically high-lights the structure for  
you, hiding names as needed. In such a world -- not too far away from  
reality from those of us who are willing to move away from Emacs --  
you could easily switch from one school of expression to another one  
by moving your mouse. It's kind of like the contour view in DrScheme.  
I use this for navigating in large files, using Large Letters, to put  
up sign posts. -- Matthias




On Jul 23, 2007, at 3:46 PM, Mitchell Wand wrote:

> Here's a message Dan Friedman wrote me a few days ago.  I'm curious  
> to see whether the patterns of communication he discusses are  
> consistent with your impressions.
>
> Can "schools of communication" be usefully defined for other  
> languages?
>
> --Mitch
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Daniel Friedman <dfried00 at gmail.com>
> Date: Jul 16, 2007 8:37 PM
> Subject: Three Schools of Expression
> To: Mitchell Wand <wand at ccs.neu.edu>
>
> Mitch,
>
> What really distinguishes three kinds of communication.  Let's
> call them schools for want of a better name:
>
> Haskell School
> Scheme School
> Prose School
>
> The Haskell School uses very short names and gets away with it
> because the types carry so much information.
>
> The Scheme School uses rather long name to make up for the lack
> of types
>
> The Haskell and Scheme Schools treat the long names and types as
> a kind of a poorman's documentation.  It is what you would expect
> from those who find writing unnatural (very few of us write novels
> for a reason).
>
> The Prose School, which I believe in, is a compromise between the
> Haskell and the Scheme School.  The Prose School knows that there
> are types, but would rather spell out the types while writing, we
> we might say that member takes a list of values and asks of a value
> is a member of that list.  The types of values for the Haskell
> School all have to be the same and the value looked up as to be that
> same type, but that is all rather obvious.  The Prose School feels
> that the structure of the program is as important as what it does,
> so making sure the structure of the code is intact and swallowable
> is critical, so although the Prose School uses decent names for
> variables, they believe that what is said about the code, including
> the names of critical variables matter.
>
> So in the Prose School, the program is both an incidental and the
> major artefact.  This is a difficult attribute to maintain, but
> one worthy of the effort.
>
> This is me urging shorter names.
>
> ... Dan
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