SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives
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January |
2003 ]
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I, for one, enjoyed Greg Smith's presentation today. He
managed to illustrate almost all the inhibitors that convince
non-programmers they want to stay that way. As open
source depends upon volunteer contributions, if you can't
contribute source, then there ought to be a way you can
contribute money to pay to have source contributed. No one
should feel left out in terms of making a useful contribution.
Programmer, non-programmer ought to have a viable means
of participating in OS/2's future.
Even if you don't feel like programming, you neither want to
write or rewrite a line of code, you should at least have a
reading knowledge. You should be able to read and
understand (mentally visualize) what the code does. As it is
neither trivial nor overly complicated HPCalc provides a
meaningful starting point. Once you have the source within
your comfort zone, then you may decide that this
programming may not be as difficult nor unpleasant an
activity. At that point you are on the road to OS/2
independence.
I'm still in the process of preparing a synopsis of my
presentation for publication on the SCOUG website. I'm
currently looking to find some brief way to present fourth
generation concepts without producing a text book. I
think I've worked it out. At my usual productive rate it's
probably another couple of weeks, considering my tendency
to rewrite frequently.
If Steven Levine is point, I'm counterpoint. When something is
broken I'm inclined to fix it. I'm not a revolutionary. I may
want to change from the past, but I don't want to do away
with it. That means I do things with keeping backward
compatibility in mind.
I would like to see us make two changes to the GNU or even
the WATCOM C compilers. One, I would like to see us change
it from a one-pass to a multi-pass compiler. Two, I would like
to see it accept multiple external procedures on input. These
two changes eliminate artificial restrictions imposed as rules in
the language. Making them would still allow full backward
compatibility.
Both changes would reduce the amount of code writing. The
first change, multi-pass, would eliminate the need for writing
"void" statements simply to provide a "forward reference" to
the compiler. The second change for any single program
would eliminate the need for make, makefiles, and linkers.
The second change would also allow multiple object modules
from a single compile. Suppose you had an application
system, say order entry, composed of multiple time-based
programs: online (realtime), daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly,
semi-annually, annually, etc.. They all share a set of common
data and routines. A major challenge to any reuse of shared
data and routines lies in synchronizing a change to either
throughout the system. By introducing a change and
recompiling all the source as a single unit of work, i.e. a single
compile, such synchronization is not only guaranteed, but
simplified relative to current methods.
In either instance you can continue to intermix the old with
the newer as you incrementally convert the old to take full
advantage of the change.
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Return to [ 18 |
January |
2003 ]
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