On Jan 4, 2015, at 8:34 PM, Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 4, 12:49pm, Ray Andrews wrote:
}
} But, would we not agree that it is the natural thing to prefer
} cumulative switches over limiting switches? Is it not intuitive that
} as you 'add' switches you 'add' features?
There's no answer for this that fits all cases. In an ideal world,
one would always think of the minimal action and then build on it,
but the world is rarely ideal. More often there exists something
that has a purpose or mechanism very similar to a new idea, and so
that something is altered to support the new idea. A lot of times,
that isn't an additive process.
Also consider an alternate (and equally valid) point of view in which
commands should be a sort of variable-length encoding. That is, the
shortest commands (the ones without switches) would ideally represent
*common* actions, not necessarily *minimal* actions.
vq