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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: PUZZLES AND PROBLEMS
Message-ID: <1510.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 13 Aug 90 03:45:13 GMT
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
Lines: 96

Category 3,  Topic 35
Message 130       Sun Aug 12, 1990
W.BADEN1 [Wil]               at 09:35 PDT
 
congratulations to mitch bradley on being the first person to offer what i
agree is readable forth code    if everyone wrote code the way mitch has shown
then forth would not have the reputation of being "write only"     any
improvement i can make will be marginal and moot    others have uploaded
further examples of readable forth and i will comment on them later

mitch has recognized the obvious fact about forth readability

     you can't understand what the code does if you don't know
     what's on the stack

the obvious way to handle this is:

     make sure there's never any question as to what's on the stack

mitch has done this as well as telling in plain english what the intent of the
code is

i hope that if you have read this far you can see another way in which
readability can be improved     the distinction between upper and lower case
was introduced to make writing more readable    all lower case is easier to
read than all upper case but mixed upper and lower is still better    most
languages also use punctuation marks to improve readability     let's rewrite
the beginning of this as it should be done in plain english


Congratulations to Mitch Bradley on being the first person to offer what I
agree is readable Forth code.  If everyone wrote code the way Mitch has shown
then Forth would not have the reputation of being "write only".  Any
improvement I can make will be marginal and moot.  Others have uploaded
further examples of readable Forth and I will comment on them later.

Mitch has recognized the obvious fact about Forth readability.

   You can't understand what the code does if you don't know
   what's on the stack.

The obvious way to handle this is:

   Make sure there's never any question as to what's on the stack.

Mitch has done this as well as telling in English what the intent of the code
is.

It is curious that Forth programmers are typically Proud To Be Different and
deprecate C, yet many blindly imitate old-fashioned C style.  Contemporary C
programming is groping toward a significant use of mixed upper and lower case.
C programming can be more tolerant of monocase because it has punctuation
marks to clarify syntax (parens, commas, brackets, semicolons).

Modern languages of Western civilization using a Latin, Greek, or Cyrillic
alphabet normally begin complete thoughts with an upper case letter, and
terminate them with a full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark.  Forth
does not have punctuation marks and uses extra spacing and subordination
instead.  A convention that I believe makes for more readable code is:

   ALL UPPER CASE for standard and would-be standard words.
   First Letter Upper Case for new words not expecting anything on the stack.
   first letter lower case for new words expecting something on the stack.
   \ Comments in proper English syntax with final punctuation.
   Extra spacing shows stack state is the same as previously indicated.

If the stack state at extra spaces for phrasing is different from the
previously indicated state there should be a stack comment.

This results in complete thoughts beginning with upper case, and modifying
phrases separated by extra spacing.

Some other convention may work as well, but if Forth code is to be readable
with adequate comments the present trend to all lower case must be cured.

In an application the names of new words should all be distinct ignoring case.
E.g., don't define "glean" and "Glean".

Mitch's examples are very readable and my improvement is minuscule.
Nonetheless there was room for improvement.  Some readers may recall my 1970
"Principle of Mutual Superiority."

   Anything you do I can do better.
   Anything I do you can do better.
   Anything I do I can do better.
   Anything IBM does will cost more money.

The last was revised in 1989 to

   Anything IBM or Apple does will cost more money.

Procedamus in pace.

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