I'm not surprised that the general principle that helps Moore reduce his code size eludes him. Authoring something blinds you to your own style—both to your mistakes, and to your brilliances. It's why prose writers can't be their own editors: you need someone who wasn't in your head during the writing process to actually be able to see what's ended up on the page, rather than just seeing reminders that immerse you back into your own implicit context.
I would expect that, if you took five of these rewrite projects of Moore's, and compare-and-contrasted their source with the source of the originals, principles would leap out at you.
(Why don't we programmers, as a culture, read code this way? It really seems like the only way to deduce novel facts about programming for yourself. Is it just that a rewrite where both the old and new codebases are shared-source is rare?)
I would expect that, if you took five of these rewrite projects of Moore's, and compare-and-contrasted their source with the source of the originals, principles would leap out at you.
(Why don't we programmers, as a culture, read code this way? It really seems like the only way to deduce novel facts about programming for yourself. Is it just that a rewrite where both the old and new codebases are shared-source is rare?)