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What you are describing is the code-reading equivalent of skimming or speed reading. Yes, you can gain some information from it. At best you are going to miss t

What you are describing is the code-reading equivalent of skimming or speed reading. Yes, you can gain some information from it. At best you are going to miss things, at worst you will learn the wrong information. No one is saying "read all the code we depend on." What I am saying is that people do this for code they need to work on, or to review (because this is the only time most people ever bother to read code), which is why most people do such a poor job of understanding programs or spotting issues. Reading code by looking at its shape is a lazy acquired habit that is inappropriate in the most common code reading circumstances.

vidarh 7y ago
My view is pretty much entirely opposite of yours. The biggest problem I see with developers are developers who struggle to keep up because they don't know how to quickly navigate a code-base to understand the big picture, and end up bogged down reading way more than they need. Outside of languages designed to be read, lacking the ability to work by seeing structure is massively debilitating. Meanwhile, I rarely if ever see people "reading code by looking at its shape", because recognizing code by shape doesn't tend to be something less experienced developers are any good at; if anything, caring about shape comes from caring about detail and wanting the detail to stand out. You need to be good at carefully reading code to be good at recognizing which aspect of the code matters and should stand out to be good at using code structure and shape as a tool to communicate.
- sedachv 7y ago
  > The biggest problem I see with developers are developers who struggle to keep up because they don't know how to quickly navigate a code-base to understand the big picture, and end up bogged down reading way more than they need. That indicates a lack of a complimentary skill set involving cross-referencing tools, grep, and note-taking and diagramming. Similar to what you would do when trying to get an overview of a subject from books (citations, indexes, and diagrams and notes). Skimming by relying on code format reading is indeed a useless and counterproductive skill here, because you will miss the important details while wasting a lot of time. It is no surprise that you are seeing this in people if you and they think the cause and solution is a dichotomy between reading code and reading the code layout.

vidarh 7y ago

My view is pretty much entirely opposite of yours. The biggest problem I see with developers are developers who struggle to keep up because they don't know how to quickly navigate a code-base to understand the big picture, and end up bogged down reading way more than they need. Outside of languages designed to be read, lacking the ability to work by seeing structure is massively debilitating. Meanwhile, I rarely if ever see people "reading code by looking at its shape", because recognizing code by shape doesn't tend to be something less experienced developers are any good at; if anything, caring about shape comes from caring about detail and wanting the detail to stand out. You need to be good at carefully reading code to be good at recognizing which aspect of the code matters and should stand out to be good at using code structure and shape as a tool to communicate.

sedachv 7y ago
> The biggest problem I see with developers are developers who struggle to keep up because they don't know how to quickly navigate a code-base to understand the big picture, and end up bogged down reading way more than they need. That indicates a lack of a complimentary skill set involving cross-referencing tools, grep, and note-taking and diagramming. Similar to what you would do when trying to get an overview of a subject from books (citations, indexes, and diagrams and notes). Skimming by relying on code format reading is indeed a useless and counterproductive skill here, because you will miss the important details while wasting a lot of time. It is no surprise that you are seeing this in people if you and they think the cause and solution is a dichotomy between reading code and reading the code layout.