principles of software distillation:
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principles of software distillation:
Old software is usually small and new software is usually large. A distilled program can be old or new, but is always small, and is powerful by its choice of ideas, not its implementation size.
A distilled program has the conciseness of an initial version and the refinement of a final version.
A distilled program is a finished work, but remains hackable due to its small size, allowing it to serve as the starting point for new works.
Many people write programs, but few stick with a program long enough to distill it.
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R AodeRelay shared this topic
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principles of software distillation:
Old software is usually small and new software is usually large. A distilled program can be old or new, but is always small, and is powerful by its choice of ideas, not its implementation size.
A distilled program has the conciseness of an initial version and the refinement of a final version.
A distilled program is a finished work, but remains hackable due to its small size, allowing it to serve as the starting point for new works.
Many people write programs, but few stick with a program long enough to distill it.
Could a programming language also be considered in light of this principle?
Minimal syntax? Minimal lexical tokens? Focussed on a particular kind of task or problem?
What about data types? Surely there are refined, precise, and specific data types (including classes), but also bloated and complicated ones? And thus a relationship between those types and the programs which operate upon them?
One might consider—and judge—larger applications by the degree to which they honour—if not exhibit—distillation. An application meant to interat with large data models must have a large and diverse set of functions, modules, or sub-programs.
But maintaining a clean separation between the smaller operations, which could be highly distilled, and the larger management tasks, could improve the orderliness and comprehensibility of the composite application.