Tips for coding using hostile tools? [closed]

Answer 1

I find it hard to believe that you don't have any form of user defined functions available in X - even batch files have functions (kind of)

As soon as you have functions, you can make things at least fairly modular.

Answer 2

Is it possible to use a different technology, better suited to your problem between X and the client-side?

Alternatively, you could use more IF/Then/else statements to construct modular blocks of code, which might help with maintenance.

Answer 3

You could find a language you like, and implement the usual "slap some data into a template"-level web-app stuff in that, and implement wrappers to call out to 'X' for the things it is good at.

Answer 4

Are you familiar with Church thesis?

If you can't solve "A" in Y but you can emulate Z in Y and Z can solve "A" then by definition Y can solve "A".

Maybe you can write some generalized routine that somehow makes X more effective for the problem at hand? A sort of extension to X, or, even better, a little-language implemented in X?

It seems that others tend to conflate "little language" with documentation. While you can try to go that way (in this case I suggest you have a look at Robodoc) I was thinking something closer to Wasabi, in approach - i.e. really using your tool X to create a sort of interpreter for X++ or even Y, without knowing what X is I can't be, of course, more specific than that.

Answer 5

Does X have comments?

Write your little language aka pseudo code in the comments.

Answer 6

In addition to documentation, choices of variable names and conventions for how they are used may help a bit. Also you may be able to set up some structural conventions in the code so that there is some regularity. Way back when, when folks wrote assembler good coders produced readable code.