Comment Re:We Choose Framentation Over Consolidation. (Score 4, Interesting) 391
I've been programming professionally for 35 years. And, I have come to the conclusion that the languages, libraries and MOST of the tools are utterly irrelevant.
Clear thought is important. And, to support this: Source control is important. On-line editing with macros are important. Literate programming is important (DE Knuth -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...). Garbage collection is (reasonably) important. Illustrations are important. Documentation rendering is important.
Hell, most of my programs are 90% documentation. Bugs? Very rare.
The SINGLE most important tool that has advanced things for me in the past 20 years? Web Browsers (HTML). Makes reading programs as literary works accessible. My programs, anyway.
Past 30 years? Literate Programming (with TDD)
Past 35 years? Scheme.
I expect my programs to be read. As literary works. That's how I write them. Most is prose, with some magic formulas. Fully cross-referenced for your browsing pleasure. With side notes and illustrations. And even audio commentary and video snippets.
These days, I see a lot of code that CANNOT be read without using an "IDE". The brain (my brain, anyway) cannot keep the required number of methods and members. Discussing the program becomes... impossible. And that which cannot be discussed and reasoned about cannot be reliable. Illustrations and diagrams need to be generated, and references from the code to those are needed.
So, invert it and make the diagram and documentation primary, and the code itself secondary to that. In other words, Knuth's Literate Programming.