4 ms·

But why not use assembly with a lot of comments then? Higher level languages aspire to take at least some of the "meaning" stuff that would otherwise be in com

• graycat 11y ago
  Good observation. Likely the answer is, again, similar to what is done in a calculus or physics book: E.g., in a calculus book, there's a lot behind the Riemann integral, and in physics, behind the electric field, so in those books we don't express everything as just simple arithmetic with comments. And, yes, in my code, when I write a function or subroutine, I give it a mnemonic name and have it do some work that has meaning that is described in the comments. But here is for me a telling point: In grad school, my best math prof just stated that math is written in complete sentences. So, the mathematical symbols do not replace the natural language, e.g., English in the sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, etc. Usually good mathematical notation has some mnemonic hints of the meaning, but, still, the meaning is in the text, not the symbols. So, net, there is limited utility and future in trying to have programming language syntax replace the English language for communicating the meaning.