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From: koopman@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Philip Koopman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Granularity of Forth Programs
Summary: magic number is seven +/- 2
Message-ID: <11677@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 26 Jan 91 16:29:56 GMT
References: <9101241516.AA11654@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 20

In article <9101241516.AA11654@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, vme131!lsiserv1!pl@UUNET.UU.NET (Pedro Sanchez) writes:
> I was wondering of what would be the ideal granularity of Forth programs.

According to Miller, the magic number for anything having to
do with human thinking is 7 +/- 2.
So (combining with some other theories), there should be
seven "chunks" per Forth word.  Roughly, each Forth word
should also correspond to one chunk (except multiple words
used for a single control structure can be grouped as a
single chunk) to factor the code appropriately.
And, importantly, control structures should seldom be
nested, and never more than 2 deep.

Alternately, a rule of thumb among many in the Forth community
is ten words inside a colon definition.

  Phil Koopman                koopman@greyhound.ece.cmu.edu   Arpanet
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