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No, but a well written program has the qualities of a good poem: You want to read it and it you can follow it easily. And every word is exactly where it belongs
by jlg23 11y ago
No, but a well written program has the qualities of a good poem: You want to read it and it you can follow it easily. And every word is exactly where it belongs.
I still remember with how much pleasure I read Edi Weitz' cl-ppcre - as a print-out, in bed.
More than once I did minor changes to programs that I attributed to my OCD just to get positive feedback from peers that I made the program more readable (say, changing (let ((x ..)) (when x ....)) to (when-let ((x ...)) ....)).
- veddox 11y ago> a well written program has the qualities of a good poem: You want to read it and it you can follow it easily. Have you ever read a poem by T.S. Eliot? A brilliant poet with an incredible gift for language, but I've been reading his "The Four Quartets" repeatedly for over a year and still don't understand much of it... Good poetry is not necessarily readily understandable (and coming to think of it, neither is a good program). But once you have understood it you see that yes, "every word is exactly where it belongs".