Flight planning spreadsheet

"L Smith" wrote in message
...
Roger Long wrote:

Got it! Damn parentheses. What a difference a ( ) makes.


For me, one of the biggest pains in programming, and the cause of more
bugs and
other problems than anything else, is trying to get my parentheses in
the right places.
I've recently had the "opportunity" to work with the Scheme programming
language.
What's one of the key structural elements of its syntax? Parentheses!

Talk about a user-unfriendly language.


Yes, it is a big problem-- that is, until you're mind is sufficiently
expanded that you look at software in a whole new way and the parenthesis
"dissolve" into the background. It's almost a kind of a "magic-eye" sort of
thing, IYSWIM. Good luck, hope you eventually "get it"

Cheers,
John Clonts
Temple, Texas

John Clonts wrote:


Yes, it is a big problem-- that is, until you're mind is sufficiently
expanded that you look at software in a whole new way and the parenthesis
"dissolve" into the background. It's almost a kind of a "magic-eye" sort
of
thing, IYSWIM. Good luck, hope you eventually "get it"

Indentation is your friend.

Actually, this is related to an aviation topic: CRM. Why do some pilots
highlight their route on a chart? Because this makes it far easier for the
human eye to locate the route when first looking (back at) the chart.
Absent this, various forms of mental processing are required. This takes
time and effort.

In programming, we've the same opportunity to do things in a way that
reduces the need to "think" over trivia. Indentation is one good example.
Whether you're programming in a C derivative (in which case you must match
braces), a LIST derivative (parens), a language with BEGINs and ENDs, or
anything else, doing this "matching" involves work. Proper indentation
makes this much easier, as a lexical block is made visually "obvious".

It's the equivilent of highlighting the route.

Most modern editors will indent automatically, and even using colors or
graphical markers to further enhance the display of the code. Using one of
these is like shifting to the use of a moving map GPS.

- Andrew

On Wed, 06 Aug 2003 22:05:32 -0400, L Smith
wrote:

Roger Long wrote:

Got it! Damn parentheses. What a difference a ( ) makes.

I forget those every once in a while. :-)), at least in spreadsheets.



For me, one of the biggest pains in programming, and the cause of more
bugs and

There is so much math required to become a programmer, I'd think that
using parentheses would become second nature. Prefix, postfix, and
infix.

other problems than anything else, is trying to get my parentheses in
the right places.

You should try writing a compiler :-))

I've recently had the "opportunity" to work with the Scheme programming
language.

I've not heard of that, but I've been out of the business for over 5
years now.

What's one of the key structural elements of its syntax? Parentheses!

Parenthesis is pretty important in most programming languages and in
virtually all math that is done within the programs. It sets the
order in which operations are performed. True the operators such as
+, -, /, *, and ^ have their own precedence, but in the end they all
bow to the parenthesis.

In school we had a few exercises where we had to perform the same math
using prefix, postfix, and infix. Now that got *really* confusing. I
don't think I could do all of them now. Actually that's not true. I
know I couldn't do all of them now. :-))
Post fix is, I believe the same as RPN and I've never successfully
managed to use a calculator that used RPN.


Talk about a user-unfriendly language.

Try straight C using pointers and dynamic memory allocation. They
call it a write only language for a reason. :-)) Straight C lets you
do virtually anything with almost no type checking. You can add an
integer to an address, to a pointer, to a piece of text and it won't
complain. More recent compilers let you turn on type checking, or
more correctly they are set up for ANSI C and will allow you to turn
the type checking off if you wish.

Still...Write something in straight C without internal documentation
and then go back six months later and try to follow what you wrote.

It's a relatively elegant language that lets you write very compact
code, unlike the visual counterparts which are very easy to use, but
generate "bloat code".

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)


Rich Lemert