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laziness, impatience, and hubris | |
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Re: Some Help for a Report About Perl (Readability vs Maintainability References)by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) |
on Nov 02, 2017 at 08:30 UTC ( [id://1202582]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
Readability vs Maintainability
Oh, one more thing. Don't fall for the old chestnut that "Python is more readable than Perl". Or that "Perl looks like line noise". Instead, remind anyone who makes such a claim that Russian is "unreadable" if you don't know Russian. Then further challenge them to explain how Python's magical powers of readability ensures that they:
That is, "readability" is far less important than "maintainability" -- so that programmers who know the language can come to the code later in its life and understand its construction and intentions and change it comfortably and confidently. And writing "maintainable" Perl is just as easy as writing "maintainable" Python. Computer programming (wikipedia) defines Readability as "the ease with which a human reader can comprehend the purpose, control flow, and operation of source code" and further lists factors that affect it namely: following a consistent programming style (and naming conventions), correct indentation, judicious commenting and wise decomposition. Note that these important code qualities are essentially independent of the programming language being used. Habitability
Like Richard Gabriel, I prefer to aim for the more pragmatic "habitable code" rather than some perfectly abstracted ideal. And I admire Robert C Martin's homespun advice of "follow the boy scout rule and always leave the campground cleaner than you found it" because this simple rule gives hope to the maintenance programmer that things will improve in the future. References
References Added Later
See Also
Updated: clarified Readability with wikipedia reference; added Habitability section.
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