Re: Averager usage

[Ken Cline]

It might be a bit late to respond to this, but...

On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 address@hidden wrote:

> ... I wake to read a far more elegant solution ...

You are referring to Marcus's solution, I presume.  It was
clearly more elegant since it used what was already there.
I guess I should have looked at the Averager/MessageProbe
stuff more closely before arrogantly posting work-arounds.
(Not that it will stop me from doing it again. =:-)

> ... and last night's efforts labelled 'hackish'.

My working definition:
  Hack: (1) A solution that is admirable is its ability to
    be implemented quickly and with the minimal amount of
    modifications to existing source. (2) A solution that
    is usually lacking in either robustness or extensibility.
    (3) A generic term used to describe code modifications,
    -- used esp. to alienate or intimidate non-programmers
    <"Yeah, I just put a ~ in there.">.

> I freely admit that my coding style is "C hack, ObjC
> wrap, Swarm deliver"! Although with 10K line of code and
> only 3 months to thesis submission I'm stuck with it.

You wanna see some bad code? I can show you some bad code...

> Reading the ObjC manual I didn't get how, or whether, you
> can use Java-like member classes. I've seen examples where
> people have two or more classes in a single .m file but
> they appear to be top-level classes without implicit
> access to each others instance variables. Am I wrong? 

AFAIK, you are correct, sir!  There maybe a way to create 
something similar to member classes in ObjC but it would
likely require some type of preprocessing.  And if we are
going to turn ObjC into Java then I'd shoot for the
exception handling first. :-)

> What experiences have other users had? ... What tools have
> been used? Have formal verification techniques been used?
> To what extent are classes designed for reusability? To
> what degree has using Swarm enabled you to separate 
> conceptual modelling from implementation?
Sorry, I'm must "take The Fifth" on those questions.

As for the rest, I'm not sure I understood all your points,
but, in the interest of promoting some discussion, I'll make
a few comments...

> ...  I had hoped at this stage to have been able to make
> a strong argument for the use of OOP, Swarm, software
> engineering practices along the lines of testability, 
> reusability, quality assurance and high-level modelling.

It seems clear to me that any model built with code would
benefit greatly from the software engineering practices you
mentioned.  In layperson's terms, the better you understand
what the code is doing, the better you can justify what is
claimed from its output.  On the other hand, even a crappy
model, with crappy code, can provide insight. Or, put
another way, it never hurts to read your horoscope. =:-)

Did I miss your point?

Ken.

_________________________________________________________
Ken Cline                             address@hidden
SAIC                                 VOICE (410) 571-0413
Annapolis, MD                          FAX (301) 261-8427









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