Re: Confessions of an "OO Foreigner"

From: Thomas A. Li (tli_at_corporola.com)
Date: 12/30/03 

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 18:17:51 GMT

When program gets bigger, we do need a big picture or structure, If it's
visual, it's much better. Visual programming is appealing. A picture worth
thousands of words.

"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:bssce6$64o$1@peabody.colorado.edu...
>
> On 30-Dec-2003, "Judson McClendon" <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote:
>
> > I realized when I read that paragraph and thought about it for a minute,
> > that I only 'think' in COBOL when I get down to the coding level. Maybe
> > because, from the beginning, my computer language experience has been
> > diverse (took classes and wrote production code in two different
assembly
> > languages and COBOL, on three different computer systems, during the
> > first year) but when I am 'thinking logic' I think in a 'pseudo'
language that
> > is somewhat like structured elements, and not in a specific language,
until
> > I get to the actual coding. At the system design stage, I am not
thinking in
> > a language at all, but in something like a four dimensional (3 + time)
> > schematic I couldn't describe very well.
>
> I am a native speaker of CoBOL and ADS/O. I can leave these languages
for a
> decade and pick them up naturally without study. Other programming
languages
> have to be re-learned to work them effectively. (The more familiar
languages
> take less time to re-learn than the less familiar languages).
>
> > This reminds me of a thread we had a few years ago about how we
> > programmers do our thing, either visually or in some other way. I am a
> > very visual person in general, and programming, for me, is very visual.
I
> > view code mentally as at might look in an IDE debugger window, either
> > in my personal pseudo code, or the specific language I'm using. In fact,
I
> > was stunned when a highly competent programmer friend said he didn't
> > program visually at all. Even after he explained it to me, I couldn't
quite
> > understand the process going on in his head. That prompted the thread.
:-)
>
> I've heard of people like you. I don't understand the process going in
your
> head. Visually you say? When you write a paper in English, do you see
a
> visual structure of your plot?

Relevant Pages

  • Re: compiler for Chinese development language
    ... This relates to the development of vernacular ... Indian vernacular display, OS and programming languages. ... Bangla and other vernaculars. ...
    (comp.compilers)
  • Re: Head-in-the-Sand Liberals (LA Times Columnist)
    ... You claimed to have known several computer languages, ... If you lie about knowing computer languages, ... of the programming loop for a functional ... You also don't know Java. ...
    (rec.org.mensa)
  • Re: Is there a mainframe skills shortage?
    ... That's because the author of the article is comparing it to standard SQL. ... and material around Lamdas and functional programming. ... obvious which languages were the ones to learn. ... stick to writing system software and leave applications to the COBOL ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: LISPPA
    ... >> a match for such imperative languages as C, ... >comparing Lisp with languages like C, Pascal and Basic, ... I can accept that Lisp tries to compensate of the lack of compile-time ... If you have tools of visual programming, nice editor, advanced ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: GoTo in Java
    ... Scripting languages are programming languages; ... override the method.via an interface, or write a new method in the wrapper. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)