Re: [FWP] Goal oriented programming

[Ronald J Kimball <rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu>]

On Wed, Jun 30, 1999 at 12:29:35PM -0500, Edward M. Perry wrote:
> > You are making the mistake of thinking that order of execution has
> > any relation to "importance".  It does not, as illustrated by the
> > following program:
> > 
> > 	$| = 1;
> > 	unlink '/vmunix';
> > 
> > "importance" is only meaningful for humans; the computer simply does
> > what it's told.  Thankfully we have a programming language which allows
> > the human to express the algorithm in a way that can include emphasis
> > of "importance".  Perl works for us, instead of us having to bend
> > to Perl.  (Only true to an extent, of course; but to a greater extent
> > than other popular languages.)
> 
> You would have really convinced me if you wrote a conditional statement
> where the conditional was processed last, but you wrote two unrelated 
> statements. So what?

Okay.

do { something() } while (condition());

The conditional in this statement is processed last.


> I must be totally unique because when I write or analyze a program,
> I pretend to be the computer and attempt to mentally process it in the
> same order that the computer would.
> 
> I must be a dullard because I find it easier to do this if the instructions
> are in the order they should be processed.

What a shame; you must completely unable to deal with subroutines.  :)

Ronald

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