atfoo: refactoring code

[Stéfan van der Walt]

I see a few people have very grand ideas for Octave - which is all well.
But I would like to comment: Eric Raymond spoke at my university a few
weeks ago, and noted a very important point: unix-like systems' strength
lies in the fact that we can factor code, and subdivide tasks between
different programs.

If a program like 'ls' had a special paging function, it would have had to
be recoded for every terminal type.  Now, due to 'less' that is not needed
- less is recoded, etc.  So we break our code into smaller, more
maintainable modules.

I see no reason to implement high level graphical functions etc. which can
be efficiently handled outside of Octave.

And I cannot see Octave ever getting ahead of Matlab, as long as we try
maintaining compatibility.

... my 2c worth

Kind Regards
Stefan van der Walt



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------