It's hard to say - I learnt FORTH at one stage. The thing with FORTH is that it's almost impossible to write long functions. You can, but it's brutal. So you write a lot of very short methods. I actually hated working like this, but I must admit the code was better.
The reason I didn't like doing this is that it disturbed my flow. I wasn't even sure how the function was going to look, let alone put together 10 functions just to flesh it out. You needed a strong design and intent before you started.
Today, of course, people rely a lot on refactoring for the same effect. I tend to like this better, but I'm not sure it's for any solid basis on my part, or I'm just lazy and want to hack instead of pontificate on the problem.
Now I try and have a rule of thumb - I like functions that have a single verb and noun, with a single optional subject, adverb and adjective. (The verbs and nouns can be system concepts, naturally). So ideally anything can be described in sub ~5 words... If I'm really serious I put together the standard nomenclature first.
Once it becomes hard to describe in those terms, or you need n+ nouns, you've probably split the atom and working at too high a level of granularity.
The reason I didn't like doing this is that it disturbed my flow. I wasn't even sure how the function was going to look, let alone put together 10 functions just to flesh it out. You needed a strong design and intent before you started.
Today, of course, people rely a lot on refactoring for the same effect. I tend to like this better, but I'm not sure it's for any solid basis on my part, or I'm just lazy and want to hack instead of pontificate on the problem.
Now I try and have a rule of thumb - I like functions that have a single verb and noun, with a single optional subject, adverb and adjective. (The verbs and nouns can be system concepts, naturally). So ideally anything can be described in sub ~5 words... If I'm really serious I put together the standard nomenclature first.
Once it becomes hard to describe in those terms, or you need n+ nouns, you've probably split the atom and working at too high a level of granularity.