[Jprogramming] library suggestion

Wed Jul 21 08:27:40 HKT 2010

On Tuesday, July 20, 2010 03:33 AM, Andrew Nikitin wrote:
>...
> What is worrying me is that in J7 this harmful practice (of mutilating original
> source code before distribution) seems to have been greatly expanded.
> Apparently, developers see value in it. That is why I started this topic with a
> question: "What is the benefit of doing so?". I am willing to admit, that I
> might have missed some huge benefit that outweighs those drawbacks I described.
> In this case I want to be enlightened.

This topic comes up from time to time, and I have little sympathy with it.
Take the plot source as an example. It has around 250 scripts in 40
directories. Some of the scripts are for housekeeping, so say around 200
scripts in the source proper.
For distribution, it is easiest to build these scripts into one. There
is no benefit in distributing them separately, since the source is
readily available, and separate distribution would just mean extra work
to ensure they are properly copied over and loaded when plot was loaded.
Instead, project manager takes care of the build almost automatically.
When developing in J, I only work from the source. It never occurs to me
to look at the built script, and I would dissuade anyone from trying to
do so. The source is much easier to work with, because it is organized
by function, and can be browsed with the project manager.
I prefer to remove comments from built scripts. For one thing I want
users to go to the source rather than the built script. For another,
comments in source scripts typically make sense in the context of a
script, but may make little sense in the context of the built script.