Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mcnc!gatech!hao!husc6!ut-sally!utah-cs!defun.utah.edu!shebs
From: shebs%defun.utah.edu.uucp@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: First Languages (yet again)
Message-ID: <5261@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: 14 Feb 88 17:13:13 GMT
References: <4022@ames.arpa> <170500012@uiucdcsb>
Sender: news@utah-cs.UUCP
Reply-To: shebs%defun.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 20

In article <170500012@uiucdcsb> robison@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu writes:

>He [Knuth] has also 
>published a book of TeX's source code with commentary - in this he is certainly
>a sparkling example of a programmer.

The TeX source code is a sparkling example of documentation, but the code
proper is nothing to write home about.  Control flow is scrambled, there
are zillions of strange little temporary variables, and side effects run
rampant.  If you don't believe it, try picking a feature from the TeXbook
and finding out who is responsible for its behavior...

I suspect that TeX is 1/4 to 1/3 larger and more complicated than necessary;
would be interesting to recode it in a purely functional language and see
how and if the complexity is reduced.

>Arch D. Robison

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu