* * * * *

                     “Code's worst enemy” is code itself

Using about three billion words, Steve Yegge [1] makes the observation that
the higher level the code, the less lines it takes to express a program [2],
which is basically a truism in Computer Science. For instance, it's easier to
write:

> x1 = ((A * y) + B) * x * (1.0 - x)
>

than it is:

> fldc1
> fsub  [x]
> fld   [A]
> fmul  [y]
> fadd  [B]
> fmul  [x]
> fmul
> fst   [x1]
>

In fact, mod_blog [3] would be about three times longer if it were written in
Assembly than in C (and to be fair, it might take less code if it were
written in Python).

So what Steve says isn't anything new in this regard.

But in Steve's billion line manifesto, he does raise a few points about IDE
(Integrated Development System)s that may make my own ideas [4] moot (or a
lot less easy to implement generally).

[1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/
[2] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/codes-worst-enemy.html
[3] https://boston.conman.org/about/
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2007/09/08.1

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