Comment by Izkata

> I am putting more emphasis on the “reading top-to-bottom” aspect and less on the level of abstraction itself (might be why I’m misreading it). My understanding was that Bob sez a function shouldn’t call any “helper” functions until the helpers have been defined - if it did, you wouldn’t be able to “read” it. But with your comment, maybe he meant that you should define your lower-level functions as prototypes, implement the higher-level functions completely, then fill in the details for the lower functions at the bottom.

Neither really, he's saying the higher-level abstractions go at the top of the file, meaning the helpers go at the bottom and get used before they're defined. No mention of prototypes that I remember.

Personally, I've never liked that advice either - I always put the helpers at the top to build up the grammar, then the work is actually done at the bottom.