It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
1–10 of 63 posts
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#2> Let’s not try to be smart. Let’s try to be understood.
By myself later
When forced to wade through what seemed
So clear at the time
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#3>Next time we have a conflict with a colleague on what is “readable”, let’s ask ourselves “Am I talking about understandability or I am talking about aesthetics?”
This is why I'm in favor of auto-formatters like Black for Python. Nobody really likes it, but nobody really hates it either and you get used to it. What this does is that it completely removes the style component of the discussion, leading to better and more content-wise discussions of the code written.
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#4> Let’s not try to be smart. Let’s try to be understood. By myself later When forced to wade through what seemed So clear at the time
It’s all Japanese to me...
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#5Absolutely agree. So many times I’ve seen developers instantly dismiss unfamiliar code as ugly and poorly written when it’s qualitatively very similar to their own, underneath some cosmetic details.
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#6>Next time we have a conflict with a colleague on what is “readable”, let’s ask ourselves “Am I talking about understandability or I am talking about aesthetics?” This is why I'm in favor of auto-formatters like Black for Python. Nobody really likes it, but nobody really hates it either and you get used to it. What this does is that it completely removes the style component of the discussion, leading to better and mo…
I think it's more productive to not care about the formatting. Allow redundant, pointless spaces that serve only to keep things out of alignment. Once it doesn't matter if the code is pretty - or if the autoformatter has been run - you just read the content.
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#7>Next time we have a conflict with a colleague on what is “readable”, let’s ask ourselves “Am I talking about understandability or I am talking about aesthetics?” This is why I'm in favor of auto-formatters like Black for Python. Nobody really likes it, but nobody really hates it either and you get used to it. What this does is that it completely removes the style component of the discussion, leading to better and mo…
I think it's more productive to not care about the formatting. Allow redundant, pointless spaces that serve only to keep things out of alignment. Once it doesn't matter if the code is pretty - or if the autoformatter has been run - you just read the content.
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Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#8>Next time we have a conflict with a colleague on what is “readable”, let’s ask ourselves “Am I talking about understandability or I am talking about aesthetics?” This is why I'm in favor of auto-formatters like Black for Python. Nobody really likes it, but nobody really hates it either and you get used to it. What this does is that it completely removes the style component of the discussion, leading to better and mo…
I'd say the main reason for strict formatting is the organizational one: when you really need for the same file to be edited by many people and not turn into a mess.
Otherwise, it may be convenience, as I don't have to maintain consistency manually. May be, because in languages where there are multiple syntactic ways to do things (Python, JS), I want flexibility in emphasizing things. (Even if I don't overuse it.) It's hard for people who came up with formatting to predict everything what can be done in the language. People may use more imperative, more functional syntax, mix things etc. This may be even warranted in the context.
Of course, you can force a particular set of idioms, but this again becomes shifted to the context of a project or organization. In languages where the syntax is more uniform, it's easier to standardize formatting throughout the whole ecosystem. And indeed it is standardized in Lisp and Go for example - not in the C family for probably historical reasons.
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#9We really should stop formatting the actual code to make it 'readable'. The editor or IDE should take care of formatting the displayed code to our preferences with a built in linter/prettier. That should end the pointless and annoying discussion.
Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics
#10Whenever this kind of disagreement happens with my team, we put it to a vote and then the winning convention is enforced across the codebase from then on. There are tons of things in programming that come down to opinion but the important thing for me is that the team has a set convention and sticks to it.