Re: [Funge] question + a new weird thing..

[Joshua J. B. <jjb...@uc...>]

Gregory:

The subroutine is not an issue of power, it is an issue of structure. And
structured code is not what Funge is all about.  In fact, structured code is
exactly what Funge is not about.

The addition of subroutines would make readable and easy-to-write Funge
programming a possibility. And we don't want that. It defeats the whole
purpose.

When considering a feature to add to the Funge specification, utility should
not be a consideration. In other high level languages (Is Funge high level?
Well, I guess so.) features are added for utilitarian purposes, that is, to
make programming more streamlined and easier to read and write. In my mind,
there are only two justifications for adding a feature to the Funge spec:

1) The feature allows Funge to do something that is impossible to do under
the current specification.
2) The feature allows Funge code to be more efficient on a functionality to
number-of-characters ratio.

Obviously subroutines do not satisfy the first point. As for the second,
although they reduce the size of the program, it is possible to call the
subroutine without specific subroutine related code structures. Of course,
doing this would be more obfuscated, but isn't that the point? It is
possible to design a pseudo-subroutine within the existing Funge
specification without adding anything to the specification. We all did this
when we were little kids programming in an unstructured basic like GW-BASIC
or Applesoft BASIC. The code size is reduced without the addition of
complexity to the language. And that's what it should all be about.

So no subroutines.

-Joshua Belsky


----- Original Message -----
From: vsync <vs...@bi...>
To: <fun...@li...>
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Funge] question + a new weird thing..


> Gregory Velichansky <hm...@bu...> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> >
> > Anyway, could somebody possibly tell me why people decided that
subroutine
> > instructions are too powerful, or otherwise inappropriate, for the One
> > True Befunge? I'm just curious.
>
> I'm not sure, but the Funge-98 spec includes a "stack of stacks", and
> it explicitly mentions subroutines in a number of places...
>
> >
> > Greg V.
> >
>
> --
> vsync
> Beware.
>
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