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I've gotten paid for working with APL code. Math professors who aren't great at typing love that stuff, but code has to be maintained and some mild verbosity, a

I've gotten paid for working with APL code. Math professors who aren't great at typing love that stuff, but code has to be maintained and some mild verbosity, as python has, is a very reasonable price to pay for that maintainability. If this was punch card input, or 110 baud teletypes, where program listings come back at a snails pace and use paper, then APL is great for that.

jodrellblank 3y ago
> "If this was punch card input, or 110 baud teletypes, where program listings come back at a snails pace and use paper" So if your typing speed hasn't gone up in proportion to the increase in Baud, I'm guessing your reading speed also hasn't gone up tens of thousands of times, and your ability to hold working state in your head hasn't gone up thousands of times, what is the advantage of increased Baud to code readability which you are talking about? Let's say I'm not disagreeing, but I'm trying to dig into what specifically the change is which makes the difference; the computer can display more code at you per second than 1950 but humans can't read much faster than 1950 so that doesn't seem like it will help. Presumably longer books aren't inherently more readable than shorter books? Can it be that Python is more readable because it lets you skim over and not read more of the code? Since not-reading isn't reading, it seems like 'more filler' that you don't read isn't what adds to readability. It presumably isn't that Python is more English-y because languages which tend towards English words (SQL, Objective-C, PowerShell Cmdlets, Applescript, BASIC) are often maligned specifically for that reason, and because Python isn't English - you couldn't speak it to Shakespeare and have him understand you). It presumably isn't because Python uses fewer symbols, or we'd all love to write Java style var1.Equals(var2) instead of == and var1.Plus(var2) instead of + and people seem to dislike that also. Why would + be preferred over .plus() but .sum() be preferred over +/ ? Is it that Python has more visible structure to hang understanding on? Is it that it's more like walking compared to jogging compared to sprinting, that one can sustain a lower effort 'slower read' for longer?

jodrellblank 3y ago

> "If this was punch card input, or 110 baud teletypes, where program listings come back at a snails pace and use paper" So if your typing speed hasn't gone up in proportion to the increase in Baud, I'm guessing your reading speed also hasn't gone up tens of thousands of times, and your ability to hold working state in your head hasn't gone up thousands of times, what is the advantage of increased Baud to code readability which you are talking about? Let's say I'm not disagreeing, but I'm trying to dig into what specifically the change is which makes the difference; the computer can display more code at you per second than 1950 but humans can't read much faster than 1950 so that doesn't seem like it will help. Presumably longer books aren't inherently more readable than shorter books? Can it be that Python is more readable because it lets you skim over and not read more of the code? Since not-reading isn't reading, it seems like 'more filler' that you don't read isn't what adds to readability. It presumably isn't that Python is more English-y because languages which tend towards English words (SQL, Objective-C, PowerShell Cmdlets, Applescript, BASIC) are often maligned specifically for that reason, and because Python isn't English - you couldn't speak it to Shakespeare and have him understand you). It presumably isn't because Python uses fewer symbols, or we'd all love to write Java style var1.Equals(var2) instead of == and var1.Plus(var2) instead of + and people seem to dislike that also. Why would + be preferred over .plus() but .sum() be preferred over +/ ? Is it that Python has more visible structure to hang understanding on? Is it that it's more like walking compared to jogging compared to sprinting, that one can sustain a lower effort 'slower read' for longer?