4 ms·

This talk has a lot of very weak points. He made the claim that more features hurt readability (~6:10), because when you are reading you have to waste time thin

by i_s 11y ago

This talk has a lot of very weak points. He made the claim that more features hurt readability (~6:10), because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code. To make that kind of claim without qualifications is just ridiculous - if it were true, why add any feature to a programming language at all? Especially if one believes readability is the most important thing in a programming language, which Rob Pike says he does. It may be true that some features hurt readability, but it is obviously not the case that all features hurt readability for all people all of the time. It is also strange that he makes so many claims about readability, considering it is the most subjective attribute of a programming language there is. For example, some code that would have been completely unapproachable to me a couple of years ago is perfectly readable to me today, because I've learned new concepts.

jshen 11y ago
There is very little, to no, emetic all evidence either way. Take all of the demands for generics and see if you can find you can find any emperical data to back up the demands.
placeybordeaux 11y ago
That one part was a weak part. If he claimed that having less features helps writeability I would have completely agreed though. It might take more writing to accomplish what you want, but frequently the choices you are making are a lot simpler, so you spend less time on them and more time just writing the code that you need to write.
- omaranto 11y ago
  "If he claimed that having less features helps writeability I would have completely agreed though." I suspect most people disagree with you and think, for example, that the features in high level languages make it easier to program in those languages than in low level ones.
bjwbell 11y ago
Some history might help. Go was created largely as a reaction to writing server side C++. I have sympathy after writing but mostly reading C++ code bases. I swore never again. I react in horror to the features being added to CUDA and SyCL to make them closer to C++. I still hate C++ with a passion, grepping around in gecko is much harder than servo.
kevinr 11y ago
> He made the claim that more features hurt readability (~6:10), because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code. To make that kind of claim without qualifications is just ridiculous - if it were true, why add any feature to a programming language at all? Because if you didn't the programming language would never do anything at all.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
kevinr 11y ago
> because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code. It seems to me that what Pike is getting at here is how easy it is to build mental models of the code, the language, the underlying system, down through all its layers, and, yes, the code's original author and any subsequent authors. I share your frustration at the subjectivity of readability claims. There's actually starting to be good academic research on code readability, for instance this paper: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/p/weimer-tse2010-readability-preprint.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/p/weimer-tse2010-readabi...
- kevinr 11y ago
  Oh, or this investigation into programming language syntax for learnability! > Recent studies in the literature have shown that syntax remains a significant barrier to novice computer science students in the field. While this syntax barrier is known to exist, whether and how it varies across programming languages has not been carefully investigated. For this article, we conducted four empirical studies on programming language syntax as part of a larger analysis into the, so called, programming language wars. http://neverworkintheory.org/2014/01/29/stefik-siebert-syntax.html http://neverworkintheory.org/2014/01/29/stefik-siebert-synta...
luckydude 11y ago
As someone maintaining an 18 year old code base, I've long held the same opinions as Rob. I often describe myself as the dumbest person on my team and then go on to say how fortunate it was that I was here first. All my smart people need to dumb stuff down enough that I can understand it. Which means we have a prayer of supporting it. Obviously I can't force everything through that filter, some problems require complex solutions. Hacker News is full of really bright people who like the expressiveness of Haskell et al. So it's not surprising that Rob's not going over well here. Just saying that us dumb people really appreciate his efforts.
- codygman 11y ago
  > Hacker News is full of really bright people who like the expressiveness of Haskell et al. So it's not surprising that Rob's not going over well here. Just saying that us dumb people really appreciate his efforts. Some of us use Haskell because we're also dumb people.

by i_s 11y ago

jshen 11y ago

There is very little, to no, emetic all evidence either way. Take all of the demands for generics and see if you can find you can find any emperical data to back up the demands.

placeybordeaux 11y ago

That one part was a weak part. If he claimed that having less features helps writeability I would have completely agreed though. It might take more writing to accomplish what you want, but frequently the choices you are making are a lot simpler, so you spend less time on them and more time just writing the code that you need to write.

omaranto 11y ago
"If he claimed that having less features helps writeability I would have completely agreed though." I suspect most people disagree with you and think, for example, that the features in high level languages make it easier to program in those languages than in low level ones.

bjwbell 11y ago

Some history might help. Go was created largely as a reaction to writing server side C++. I have sympathy after writing but mostly reading C++ code bases. I swore never again. I react in horror to the features being added to CUDA and SyCL to make them closer to C++. I still hate C++ with a passion, grepping around in gecko is much harder than servo.

kevinr 11y ago

> He made the claim that more features hurt readability (~6:10), because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code. To make that kind of claim without qualifications is just ridiculous - if it were true, why add any feature to a programming language at all? Because if you didn't the programming language would never do anything at all.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

kevinr 11y ago

> because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code. It seems to me that what Pike is getting at here is how easy it is to build mental models of the code, the language, the underlying system, down through all its layers, and, yes, the code's original author and any subsequent authors. I share your frustration at the subjectivity of readability claims. There's actually starting to be good academic research on code readability, for instance this paper: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/p/weimer-tse2010-readability-preprint.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/p/weimer-tse2010-readabi...

kevinr 11y ago
Oh, or this investigation into programming language syntax for learnability! > Recent studies in the literature have shown that syntax remains a significant barrier to novice computer science students in the field. While this syntax barrier is known to exist, whether and how it varies across programming languages has not been carefully investigated. For this article, we conducted four empirical studies on programming language syntax as part of a larger analysis into the, so called, programming language wars. http://neverworkintheory.org/2014/01/29/stefik-siebert-syntax.html http://neverworkintheory.org/2014/01/29/stefik-siebert-synta...

luckydude 11y ago

As someone maintaining an 18 year old code base, I've long held the same opinions as Rob. I often describe myself as the dumbest person on my team and then go on to say how fortunate it was that I was here first. All my smart people need to dumb stuff down enough that I can understand it. Which means we have a prayer of supporting it. Obviously I can't force everything through that filter, some problems require complex solutions. Hacker News is full of really bright people who like the expressiveness of Haskell et al. So it's not surprising that Rob's not going over well here. Just saying that us dumb people really appreciate his efforts.

codygman 11y ago
> Hacker News is full of really bright people who like the expressiveness of Haskell et al. So it's not surprising that Rob's not going over well here. Just saying that us dumb people really appreciate his efforts. Some of us use Haskell because we're also dumb people.