[self-interest] (Aspects) Utilities in Lisp vs Design Patternsin Smalltalk- Self

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

On Thursday 24 April 2003 13:23, Albertina Lourenci wrote:
> I have not been chatting about this because I am delving deeper into
> these topics! And I would appreciate an in-depth analysis because
> I do think it is of the utmost importance for the future of software
> towards implementation of complex systems!

These are actually basic programming topics, so you might have more luck 
finding information about them in a introductory text than in a 
advanced PhD thesis.

> David Harris wrote:
> > But, in reality, most people design in both directions at once --
> > as it is important to thing about the low-level implementation at
> > the same time as considering the overall stategy or hight-level
> > shape of the program.

Exactly - you must both watch where you are stepping and yet keep your 
eye on where you are going. Creating random low level components 
without thinking about the higher level modules that will use them will 
get you nowhere. And defining high level abstractions without knowing 
what is available to implement is a sure way to get a project stuck in 
the design phase without ever moving to the programming phase.

But it isn't easy to do both at the same time, which is one of the 
reasons why I think that pair programming in extreme programming is a 
good idea.

-- Jecel