The software development process.

In article , Clifford Heath wrote: [....]

OTOH, try getting dozens of programmers to produce a modern wordprocessor in six weeks....

Yes. That also has the advantage that, depending on the debugger, the names will show up in debug displays.

The density of programmers on a project is analogous to the speed of light. 5 programmers corresponds roughly to C. You will probably do best with 2 programmers, while paying them the salary for 5.

The overhead is increasing proportionally to the square of the number of people involved.

If you want the cow to produce more milk and consume less food, you need to milk it more and feed it less.

Vladimir Vassilevsky

DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

In message , dated Wed, 13 Sep 2006, CBFalconer writes

There are lots of those 'English irregular verbs'.

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is pig-headed.

In message , dated Wed, 13 Sep 2006, Vladimir Vassilevsky writes

They implode if you do that. Messy!

I think there is a time a place for just about any coding style but you've touched on a pet peeve of mine.

I buy a evaluation board, because I'm interested in a certain processor. My goal is to decide whether or not to use the part. I am not buying the board to learn C, and I'm certainly not buying the board to learn a new programming language.

The evaluation software is written by some idiot that's discovered how to make C code read like English (or pig Latin or something). I've got to search through a half-dozen include files to figure out that "MAGIC_NUMBER" is 0x0000, and to identify which SFR the structure element xxx.yyy[zzz] points to. What I really wanted to know was which bit to set or clear in a register to enable a feature of the processor.

This is a case where I want to reconcile the code to the chip's data sheet, and prefer as little creativity as possible.

Hershel

Where I come from, it's

I you he/she/it

we y'all they

which has an interesting parallel to tu/vous.

John

With contemporary tools, usually you just right click on "MAGIC_NUMBER" and tell the IDE "goto definition of..." or somesuch.

I'd much rather see code that does something like TIMER1CTRL |= TIMER_START than *(BYTE *) 0x308 |= 0x20 ...

Yeah, but when "MAGIC_NUMBER" resolves to "INTEGER_TO_BE_SET" which resolves to "I_THINK_ITS_THIS" which Finally resolves to "2", then you have obfuscated things totally. If you have a single layer, then that is manageable and readable...

Charlie

All of those are adjectives, not verbs.

Yes... even to the point of occasionally using "y'all" in the singular as a term of dignity (implying something like "you and your people"). This is exactly how "vous" became the polite singular in French. Is that what you were getting at?

Of course, in an earlier wave of change in English, "you" (the plural) replaced "thou" (singular) and became both plural and singular.

In Spanish, "nos" and "vos" got the word "otros" ("others") suffixed to them; this is analogous to the "all" in "y'all."

Of course, truly erudite Southerners distinguish "y'all" (plural of "you") from "ya'll" (contraction for "you will").

To bring this back to embedded systems and electronics, let me just say that I'm a computational linguist...

P.S. How the Italians managed to turn Latin "nobis" into Italian "ci" ("to us") is beyond me.

Well said, sir!

I like to puzzle beginning Lisp programmers with something like:

(setf a 'b) (setf b 'c) (setf c 'd) (eval (eval d))

the point being that we don't want to create puzzles like this needlessly.

In message , dated Wed, 13 Sep 2006, mc writes

There wasn't one 'Latin', of course; there were lots of varieties. The case of 'equus' and 'caballo' is well known. Italian, too, is a composite of many languages, and variations, even up to the level of putative different languages, are in use in Italy even now.

In message , dated Wed, 13 Sep 2006, mc writes

No, they are compound verbs.

No, I wasn't aware of that usage. I grew up in New Orleans, which was originally a French settlement, and always thought that having a 2nd person plural distinction was handy. It had morphed from the ambiguous French personal/impersonal-plural to the more practical singular/plural form. It can be pronounced "you all" or "yall." In some places, singular is "you" and plural is "you guys." When I say "you all" (meaning, the group present) here in California, some people are audibly amused. Rearranged slightly (would all of you step inside?) nobody notices.

My ex-inlaws were cajuns, and their first language was cajun French. In a lot of sw Louisiana, cajun was the common spoken language, until they drafted all those kids for WWII and forced them to learn English.

Pity. "Thou" is cool.

Or "you may/should", as "y'all come on over after the game, okay?"

I remember whan I used to sneak into my girlfriend's room in the dorm at all-female Newcomb College. It was traditional for someone to walk the floor announcing "Man in the hall, y'all!"

Please tell us more about that.

John

In message , dated Wed, 13 Sep 2006, John Larkin writes

He's actually 'Babelfish'. (;-).

Hello Vladimir,

You have just found the golden formula that left-leaning politicians use in tax law proposals :-)

In some areas it eventually became "you's guys" :-)