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It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

avraam.dev

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Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#12
As a side-side note:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/158668-virtual-memory-on-usb/?d...

>From John Phillip Mustachio of Houston, this excerpt from the trial testimony of the plaintiff, whose first language is Greek.

Q. What I'm trying to do, Mr. Emmanonil, is to show that you have quite a bit of experience in owning and operating real estate, do you not?

A. No. The only one experience I have is just to - to know how is the valuable of the land is going to go up or down. That's I'm good only. But legal phrase like this one, I'm zero. Like I say earlier, I have gift know when is good piece of land or not. The rest of this stuff it's English to me.

Original link is down, the sentence can be found here:

https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&T...

Somewhat Criminal by Jerry Buchmeier

VOL. 60 NO. 9 TEXAS BAR IOURNAL 991 October 1997

https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_ https://www.texasbar.com/Content/NavigationMenu/NewsandPubli...

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#13

We 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.

Yeah following simple formatting rules is a job we can (and should) give to the computer.

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#14
I have yet to figure out what makes code readable. My own anecdote: I remember reading some code written by Jeff Dean and was amazed by how easy it was to parse and understand. Funny thing is it had quite a few violations of the style guide. In contrast, when I read some of my own code a year later I was scratching my head. It was too dense, variables had too-long names etc. (and it’s the etc that I cannot fully articulate/correct)

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#15
OT question from non-native speaker: those commas that mimics speech pauses are syntactically acceptable in English? (Or Greek?)

> In Greece, we have a similar phrase [...] > Readable code, is a piece of code [...] > In Germany, they say [...]. > In 16th century, in the Habsburgermonarchy [...] > [...] but let me, tell you a secret: [...] > Readable code, is a piece of code [...]

(I'm from Bohemian village where we were taught commas delimits sentences and such usage would be technically incorrect, but I suppose there are different rules in other languages.)

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#16

We 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.

Problems arise when you refer to lines/columns which are different from what you see by preference. I believe there will be much more friction in line-based tools than in people who do not like a particular style.

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#17

We 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.

QBASIC got that right decades ago :-P

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#18

We 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.

I read your comment too fast and I almost dismissed it, thinking you were talking, like everyone else, about formatters (gofmt, rustfmt). But what you are saying is much more interesting, as we are all allowed to keep our preferences. Is there any major editor/IDE working on this? You are making me miserable, now that I read this I can't live with just formatters anymore :D

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#19
In our world of Ship It/Get Shit Done/Move Fast Break Things, code readability doesn't stand a chance.

I find there's little allowance for time spent thinking about the poor sucker who has to read my code, lest the sprint burndown chart suffers.

That's why code linters and formatters are so important. When applied correctly, it's the closest we can come to having the entire codebase looking like it was written by one person. A single standard you can learn once. Go and Dart are good at this.

Re: It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics

#20
post #14

I have yet to figure out what makes code readable. My own anecdote: I remember reading some code written by Jeff Dean and was amazed by how easy it was to parse and understand. Funny thing is it had quite a few violations of the style guide. In contrast, when I read some of my own code a year later I was scratching my head. It was too dense, variables had too-long names etc. (and it’s the etc that I cannot fully arti…

It's probably like prose: sorry to write such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one.

To express something well, you need a sense for all the different ways to express it, to be able to choose the right one. But to just express it, you only need one.

anecdote: naming is hard. I can code something in a few hours, and still not have ideal names after weeks. Some come the next day.

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