Re: Structured Programming using Forth

Andrew Haley wrote:
Duke Normandin <merrile@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2007-03-30, Andrew Haley <andrew29@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Bottom-up" versus "top-down" is a very old-fashioned way of
thinking about software development. It has never been applicable
to Forth. Instead, Forth developers have always uses an iterative
and incremental development model. This involves building
successive versions and learning from the development and use of
the system at each iteration. At each stage, refactoring is done
if it's needed.

Seems like some half-ass "hit-n-miss" way of thinking about software
development, to me.

I don't understand how you come to this conclusion.

I'd rather have "a plan" of some kind, instead of fumbling
around.

Of course.

So as far as I'm concerned, the top-down approach for planning is
just fine.

Apart from the fact that it doesn't work, it's great! In practice, at
the start of any sizeable project you don't know enough to do a
complete top-down decomposition, so you build prototypes and iterate
from there.

Yes, but you *can* design the prototype top-down. And I think that helps you get closer to a final product in the prototype phase, at least if you understand the problem domain adequately before you start.

This is, of course, what people have been doing forever,
and not just in software design: it's the way that all engineering is
done.


--
John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
--
Specialization is for robots.
.

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