scaffold : Java Glossary

Display the previous ten year’s financial history, three years at a time. Show each year in two rows, with the months Jan — June on the top row and July to Dec on the bottom. Each each Month cell, show 4 different values. In Abundance to handle this problem you write a scaffold function to describe the pattern and you write the code to display the data for one cell. From then on everything else is automatic to deal with scrolling. You just concentrate on keeping the data correct in the backing array or file.

Another scaffold application would be if you want to display data in a circle, say decorating the numerals of a clock. Again you write the code to display one cell and write a scaffold function to describe the shape. From then on all is automatic.

The shapes you can draw are limited purely by your mathematicaly ingenuity. They don’t have to be in the least symmetric.

I am winging it a bit here, but here is roughly what an Abundance 4-line scaffold function written in