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(Mostly) Functional Design?
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Date: | 2005-07-18 (18:16) |
From: | Alex Baretta <alex@b...> |
Subject: | Re: [Caml-list] (Mostly) Functional Design? |
Doug Kirk wrote: Le me quote your message starting with the disclaimer: > <disclaimer> > All of the preceding is simply my opinion based upon my own > observations and experience. It is not intended to incite controversy. > </disclaimer> I don't think your message incites controversy. It is a thoughtful apology of the metapattern of devising, documenting and teaching canonical solutions to canonical problems. I recognize that this is actually one of the fundamental ideas in Engineering as a whole. > > In the OO world, it is common now to speak of a design as an > application of one or more of the patterns; ... This I would not like. Design is an eminently "artistic" activity: it takes creativity. Applying patterns is a parrot's work. One my main reasons for liking Ocaml is that the "general coding strategies" that apply are do not produce the vast majority of my locs, but are usually localizeable in a small bunch of lines in a module. This means that me job is that of the artist, not that of the parrot. This makes me feel a little less miserable for being a hacker ;) > Having a resource such as that *is* a valuable tool that enables > novices to raise their level of thinking, and even more so, > understanding, of the environment in which they are operating. (The > danger of having the resource without experience is pointed out in the > rant above...it may be easy for novices to see it as the entire toolbox.) It usually takes me a few minutes to explain a single "design strategy" to a collegue. It takes a few more minutes to show an example. It might take anywhere between a few minutes to the rest of his/her lifetime to digest the idea. I wonder if this situation would improve, given adequate literature and documentation. > For myself, I've been lurking on this list for awhile, and trying to > learn FP practices using Ocaml. Since I have 3 mouths to feed ... Me too! ;) > I must > spend most of my time doing work that clients are willing to pay > for...the last 9 years that means Java. The problem is not so much the lack of documentation, but the lack of customers. The year of our lord 2005 is a very sad year for the IT business, at least in Italy. Alex -- ********************************************************************* http://www.barettadeit.com/ Baretta DE&IT A division of Baretta SRL tel. +39 02 370 111 55 fax. +39 02 370 111 54 Our technology: The Application System/Xcaml (AS/Xcaml) <http://www.asxcaml.org/> The FreerP Project <http://www.freerp.org/>