Programmers and librarians

[Jose Perez-Carballo]

Sorry, I didn't mean my previous message to go the whole list (in
which case I would have provided more context).  It was a response to
jschall at glenpub.lib.az.us (Joe Schallan), who wrote:

 >As I am not a programmer, I have no idea whether
 >computer science has evolved ways to make such updating--
 >including adjustments to a program's "look and feel"--as easy as
 >possible.  Back when I was associated with computer scientists,
 >I recall "structured programming" (courtesy Dr. Dijkstra, I believe)
 >and modularity being all the rage.  Has this translated into more
 >easily maintainable and flexible software?

my response to that was that (or should have been, had I finished to
compose the message, sorry about that) the 90's equivalent to
structured programmning is the object oriented approach (e.g. C++,
Java) which is an attempt to make code more easily maintainable and
flexible (as well as reusable).  But it doesn' matter what tools you
use it is always possible to write extremely obscure and unsafe code
in the nicest languages.  People have to the tought to be write clear,
easy to maintain and safe code.


-- 
Jose Perez-Carballo
School of Communication and Library Studies
Rutgers University
4 Huntington Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08903