Re: [OT] scoping

From	Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.perl.misc
Subject	Re: [OT] scoping
Date	2013-07-12 15:50 +0100
Message-ID	<87oba7vnlj.fsf@sapphire.mobileactivedefense.com> (permalink)
References	(3 earlier) <87k3kxasym.fsf@sapphire.mobileactivedefense.com> <hsi3ba-va22.ln1@anubis.morrow.me.uk> <87li5coi6v.fsf@sapphire.mobileactivedefense.com> <874nc0w72t.fsf_-_@violet.siamics.net> <slrnktvvc3.erc.hjp-usenet3@hrunkner.hjp.at>

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"Peter J. Holzer" <hjp-usenet3@hjp.at> writes:
> On 2013-07-12 07:50, Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> writes:
>> > ... and specifically, a certain language who was explicitly created
>> > to teach beginners about 'proper scoping' and 'cleanly designed
>> > code', namely, Pascal, doesn't
>
> Pascal was designed in the late 1960s, only about a decade after
> FORTRAN and COBOL. I hope we have learned something in the more than
> four decades since then.

ALGOL 60 was (as the name may suggest) designed at the beginning of
the 1960s and it included the concept of nested lexical scopes with
attached variable sets, cf

http://www.masswerk.at/algol60/report.htm

This means your statement would be more appropriately worded as: Four
decades after someone suggested a different approach, we are as
unconvinced as ever that anything was deficient with the tradional way
of handling this.

[Pascal program structure description]

> This had two negative consequences: Variable declarations in the
> outer procedures were separated widely (often hundreds or thousands
> of lines) from the place where they were used

That's not a consequence of having to put variable definitions at the
beginning of a procedured but of including 'hundreds or thousands' of
lines of loosely related code in between and the simple solution to
this problem is "Don't do that". 

> and they were visible in all the inner procedures, so it was easy to
> accidentally reuse a loop variable in an inner procedure called from
> that loop.

Again, the way to solve the problem that 'nobody can still find his
way through this mess' is to avoid creating it in the first place:
Don't separate 'declaration and use' of a variable by 'thousands of
lines of code', move these 'thousands of lines' into subroutines which
don't have to share state with some parent routine and pass the data
they need to them as arguments.

[...]

>> > and IMHO, with a good reason: When people can't have multiple
>> > disjunct sets of variables used by unrelated parts of the same
>> > 'aggregate subroutine', they do what they should be doing instead,
>> > namely, structure their code.
>>
>> 	I disagree.  I deem the use of nested scopes as crucial to code
>> 	structuring.  Should the "roles" of the variables (whether
>> 	input, output, or local) become apparent later, it'd be trivial
>> 	to split the function, -- and that's likely to be done exactly
>> 	along the scope boundaries previously coded in.
>
> Right. I split functions/methods quite frequently. Either if a function
> becomes too long or if I notice that I need part of a function in a
> different function. Nested scopes make this kind of refactoring a
> no-brainer.

The point is that this 'kind of refactoring' shouldn't ever be
necessary because the '15,000 lines of code and counting' 'subroutine'
shouldn't have been created to begin with: That's another of these
'outlandish new concepts' people have been ignoring for four decades
now ('stepwise refinement') because 'the old ways' don't need no
fixing especially since ...

> And of course they make reading the code a lot simpler, too.

... abstraction is evil because it hides details. It is claimed that
some of them wouldn't be significant at some higher level but
actually, higher level already sounds highly suspicious ...

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this should work "George Mpouras" <nospam.gravitalsun.antispam@spamno.hotmail.anispam.com.nospam> - 2013-07-11 01:08 +0300
  Re: this should work Jim Gibson <jimsgibson@gmail.com> - 2013-07-10 15:49 -0700
    Re: this should work George Mpouras <nospam.gravitalsun.noadsplease@hotmail.noads.com> - 2013-07-11 09:42 +0300
      Re: this should work tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2013-07-11 08:02 +0000
        Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 12:45 +0100
          Re: this should work George Mpouras <nospam.gravitalsun.noadsplease@hotmail.noads.com> - 2013-07-11 15:03 +0300
            Re: this should work "Peter J. Holzer" <hjp-usenet3@hjp.at> - 2013-07-11 14:52 +0200
              Re: this should work George Mpouras <nospam.gravitalsun.noadsplease@hotmail.noads.com> - 2013-07-11 16:01 +0300
                Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 14:29 +0100
        Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 14:27 +0100
          Re: this should work Peter Makholm <peter@makholm.net> - 2013-07-11 15:50 +0200
      Re: this should work Jürgen Exner <jurgenex@hotmail.com> - 2013-07-11 03:34 -0700
        Re: this should work George Mpouras <nospam.gravitalsun.noadsplease@hotmail.noads.com> - 2013-07-11 13:55 +0300
          Re: this should work Peter Makholm <peter@makholm.net> - 2013-07-11 13:57 +0200
          Re: this should work Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> - 2013-07-11 09:10 -0400
            Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 21:35 +0100
    Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 10:32 +0100
      Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 12:51 +0100
        Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 13:42 +0100
          Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 16:23 +0100
            Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 17:17 +0100
              Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 18:08 +0100
              Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 21:48 +0100
          Re: this should work Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> - 2013-07-11 10:32 -0700
            Re: this should work Jürgen Exner <jurgenex@hotmail.com> - 2013-07-11 10:48 -0700
              Re: this should work "George Mpouras" <nospam.gravitalsun.antispam@spamno.hotmail.anispam.com.nospam> - 2013-07-11 21:38 +0300
              Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 23:08 +0100
            Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 18:48 +0100
              Re: this should work Charles DeRykus <derykus@gmail.com> - 2013-07-11 12:03 -0700
                Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 22:02 +0100
                Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 23:06 +0100
                Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-12 01:04 +0100
                Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-15 13:41 +0100
                Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-15 14:07 +0100
                Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-15 15:05 +0100
                Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-15 21:02 +0100
                Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-15 23:58 +0100
                Re: this should work tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2013-07-15 17:23 +0000
                Re: this should work Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> - 2013-07-15 15:40 -0400
              Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 21:58 +0100
                Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-11 23:17 +0100
                [OT] scoping Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-07-12 07:50 +0000
                Re: [OT] scoping aka 'new holes in old shoes' Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-12 11:53 +0100
                [OT] engineering Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-07-15 11:37 +0000
                Re: [OT] engineering Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-16 21:49 +0100
                Re: [OT] engineering Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-07-17 09:27 +0000
                Re: [OT] engineering Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-17 15:53 +0100
                Re: [OT] engineering Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-07-22 10:36 +0000
                Re: [OT] engineering Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> - 2013-07-23 06:43 -0400
                Re: [OT] engineering Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-07-22 10:38 +0000
                Re: [OT] engineering Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-07-26 10:09 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping "Peter J. Holzer" <hjp-usenet3@hjp.at> - 2013-07-12 14:58 +0200
                Re: [OT] scoping Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-12 15:50 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> - 2013-07-12 13:34 -0400
                Re: [OT] scoping Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-12 22:04 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-13 13:13 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping John Black <jblack@nospam.com> - 2013-07-13 20:01 -0500
                Re: [OT] scoping Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-14 03:24 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping "Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+usenet@xs4all.nl> - 2013-07-14 10:49 +0200
                Re: [OT] scoping Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-14 13:13 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping "Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+usenet@xs4all.nl> - 2013-07-14 17:02 +0200
                Re: [OT] scoping Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-14 22:21 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping "Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+usenet@xs4all.nl> - 2013-07-15 02:21 +0200
                Re: [OT] scoping Xho Jingleheimerschmidt <xhoster@gmail.com> - 2013-07-14 17:04 -0700
                Re: [OT] scoping Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-15 14:12 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2013-07-14 15:11 +0000
                Re: [OT] scoping "Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+usenet@xs4all.nl> - 2013-07-14 17:34 +0200
                Re: [OT] scoping Xho Jingleheimerschmidt <xhoster@gmail.com> - 2013-07-14 15:34 -0700
                Re: [OT] scoping Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-15 14:27 +0100
                Re: [OT] scoping John Black <jblack@nospam.com> - 2013-07-14 23:48 -0500
                Re: [OT] scoping Martijn Lievaart <m@rtij.nl.invlalid> - 2013-07-13 12:14 +0200
      Re: this should work David Harmon <source@netcom.com> - 2013-07-11 10:02 -0700
        Re: this should work Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-07-11 22:04 +0100
          Re: this should work David Harmon <source@netcom.com> - 2013-07-12 09:34 -0700
            Re: this should work Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-07-12 18:16 +0100
        Re: this should work "Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+usenet@xs4all.nl> - 2013-07-12 15:44 +0200
          Re: this should work David Harmon <source@netcom.com> - 2013-07-12 15:53 -0700
  Re: this should work Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> - 2013-07-11 09:14 -0400
    Re: this should work "George Mpouras" <nospam.gravitalsun.antispam@spamno.hotmail.anispam.com.nospam> - 2013-07-11 19:45 +0300

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