From: Mark Probert <probertm@...>
Date: 2002-12-08T06:32:42+09:00
Subject: Re: (OT) Re: elseif?

At 05:23 AM 12/8/2002 +0900, Dave Thomas wrote:

>Unfortunately, many folks seem to feel that continuous improvement means
>continuous accretion of features. I have a theory that in really, really
>good designs, the total amount of *stuff* stays the same over time. As
>improvements are added, less good things are discarded.

One example where I have seen continuous improvement is with Chuck
Moore's version of Forth (please ignore the broken record ;-).
His latest effort, called ColorForth, is smaller, faster, and
arguably, more elegant and powerful than previous incarnations.
By way of example, imagine a full VLSI CAD system, graphics, simulator,
and all, in around 500 lines of code (under 20k).

The Forth community, which likes ANSI stuff, is headed in a different
direction.  And most people find the "continuous improvements" take
away their "favourite features".

Chuck is not sentimental, from what I can tell.  And not attached to
convention (a 24-key keyboard?  Huffman encoding, not ASCII? Color
instead of punctuation?).  Are these "less good"?  Hard to say,
unless you just look at the results.

Regards,

-mark.