Subject: RE: [vhdl-200x] Corrections to Minutes for VHDL-200X-FT meeting, San Jose Dec 4, 2003
From: Bailey, Stephen (SBailey@model.com)
Date: Wed Dec 10 2003 - 15:55:02 PST
I see no differentiation between ease of typing and reading. They are
the same to me.
In general, longer descriptions are harder to read as the same
information scrolls off to the right (unreadable in many text editors
without scrolling or cropped from a listing printout) or requires the
reading of multiple lines instead of a single line (either due to manual
or editor breaking of lines).
But, I will acknowledge that there is subjective opinion on whether one
is harder than another. However, my experience (much wider than just
VHDL) indicates that your opinion (preference over longer names vs.
shorter) is in the minority. Since I want the VHDL user community to
grow, I want our focus to be on the market majority.
As a marketing person, I cannot credibly argue the value of verbosity
for verbosity sake and I certainly cannot tell people that they should
choose VHDL over Verilog because we have to_string instead of to_str. I
can persuade people to use VHDL over Verilog if, with the same effort
(productivity) or less, you get a hardware description that has a
significantly greater probability to be bug free. There are many
studies that show that the bugs per line of code is relatively constant
from assembly through C++ or Java (across any abstraction level).
Concise descriptions are valuable as they reduce the lines of code and
opportunity for bugs.
Hopefully, I have persuaded you or others. If not, we will need to
agree to disagree on this issue and see how things work out. However, I
do want you to know that I recognize your contributions on other issues
and appreciate your participation.
-Steve Bailey
> Bailey, Stephen wrote:
> > However, I must admit to not comprehending what is causing
> all of this
> > consternation.
> >
> > Is To_Str not understandable? Is "str" so infrequently
> used that no one
> > can be expected to realize it is an abbreviation for "string"?
>
> It's understandable, but not as readily as to_string. String is a
> complete English word, str is not.
>
> > The benefit of typing fewer characters due to the use of
> commonly used
> > abbreviations is just that, a benefit. There is no negative here.
>
> It's quicker to type str, but IMHO it's quicker to read
> string. So which
> function is more important, reading or writing? I think reading wins,
> especially given that you can have your editor expand the
> abbreviations
> on writing.
>
> > In other areas, we could argue as to whether or not "slv" is an
> > appropriate abbreviation for "std_logic_vector". However,
> I would note
>
> It's nice to type (so I have my editor configured to expand it), but
> it's no easier to read.
>
>
>
> Regards,
> Hamish (not speaking for Agilent)
> --
> Hamish Moffatt
> R&D Engineer
> Data Networks Division
> Agilent Technologies
> +61 3 9210 5782 (T210 5782) Tel
>
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