A head full

Spooky or what. Noting that Tony Graham quoted from Code Complete I decided to take a look. I'm reading about keeping a headful of code.. when Paul Graham (just noted the name overlap) blogs about homers being that nice headful. I'm used to a files worth being printable on less than two pages, including comments, which I've always defined as being a headful, i.e. the logic you can comprehend at one sitting. Paul makes the fair point that You shake it loose if you leave it for a distraction, and need time to reload, if that makes sense.

He also believes, because of the impact of breaks, that working for long periods is good... presumably for the design? I prefer his sidenote. Go take a break, your brain will continue to work on the problem and make it easier to solve when you come back.

He makes a backhanded compliment to the scripting languages, Because it's initially just an experiment, instead of a "production" language he uses a mere "scripting" language—which is in fact far more powerful. He completely rewrites the program several times; that wouldn't be justifiable for an official project, but this is a labor of love and he wants it to be perfect. Neat. Accurate too IMHO.

Another comment I believe comes from his faith in Lisp. To quote him.

You can magnify the effect of a powerful language by using a style called bottom-up programming, where you write programs in multiple layers, the lower ones acting as programming languages for those above. If you do this right, you only have to keep the topmost layer in your head.

I'm sure I've read that in his book - if it's not him quoting that as a feature of Lisp.

Nice article, if you're into programming and learning, it may be worth reading it.