Arc Forum | Yeah, some other polynomial might be a better example. The Pythagorean formula h...

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2 points by akkartik 1862 days ago | link | parent

Yeah, some other polynomial might be a better example. The Pythagorean formula has a clean separation when it comes to which args each term uses. How about the roots of a quadratic equation when you start out with a, b and c on the stack?

2 points by zck 1861 days ago | link

Yes, that is definitely simpler, although the formula is more esoteric. At least, for me, it triggers the "I was taught this in school and haven't used it since" filter.

Maybe something like:

 total-price cost-per-item number-of-items shipping-cost-per-item rush-cost = cost-per-item number-of-items * shipping-cost-per-item number-of-items * + rush-cost +

This doesn't seem super great; it could be refactored to use each thing once, but it's late and I can't think of any better example.

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2 points by akkartik 1861 days ago | link

You're right that in general any such example can be refactored to reduce stack operations. That's even a fun game for many Forth programmers to play. (We lispers have our own equivalents.) But it usually makes the code less comprehensible, in my experience.

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