Structured Programming

[Mike Taylor]

In article <234 at jarthur.UUCP> wilkins at jarthur.UUCP (Mark Wilkins) writes:
>
>      IN SHORT:  If you don't need structured programming because your
> program is really small, then great.  But very little is that easy to
> program in an unstructured way.  Ever try writing 10,000 line program
> that works in Applesoft BASIC?  THAT will make you a believer.

Hmmm ...  A few years ago BASIC was all I had, structured programming
was a closed book to me, and yet I seemed to get by without any of the
sorts of problems that Structured Programming is supposed to alleviate.
I will admit I never wrote a 10000-line BASIC program, but I certainly
got into the 1000s.  I think that you get by with what you have, there
is a danger (maybe) of people being "spoiled" by having environments
that do it all for them.

I dunno.  It doesn't make much sense put like that, and when I look
back on it, I can't *believe* I ever wrote anything of substance in a
language that doesn't even have local variables.  But looking at it
objectively, I never had as much difficulty debugging my huge,
sprawling unstructured BASIC programs as I do now debugging my huge,
sprawling, but structured, C programs.  (Only 1/2 a :-)

	Disclaimer:  I love C!  I *know* it's better than BASIC.  OK.
______________________________________________________________________________
Mike Taylor - {Christ,M{athemat,us}ic}ian ...  Email to: mirk at uk.ac.warwick.cs
"Can't say my name's well-known, you don't see my face in Rolling Stone (yet)"
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