Efficiency AND Readability

[der Mouse]

In article <3386 at geaclib.UUCP>, daveb at geaclib.UUCP (David Collier-Brown) writes:
> A good counter-example to the claim that efficient code is unreadable
> (and also the claim that its non-portable) exists in the TeX
> typesetting implementation.

> The author was concerned with all three, and so invented a language
> (formerly called DOC, now WEB) to allow the three to coexist.
> Regrettably, it works best for monstrous great books, not little
> critical bits...

Also regrettably, it's unreadable!  Of all the serious code I've seen
(ie, not including things like the Obfuscated C Code Contest), WEB code
is easily the least readable.

Why?  Two big reasons come to mind.  One is that what you see usually
isn't what you're running: what the .web file contains doesn't
correspond to the resulting binary.  The change files were a nice idea,
but rather misguided.  The other is that it's impossible (err, I find
it impossible) to keep it straight whether what I'm reading is
commentary or code.  Any given at-sign symbol seems to have at least
four different meanings, depending on the phase of the moon and how I'm
holding my mouth.  English is usually commentary but sometimes isn't.

					der Mouse

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