3 ms·

My experience says totally otherwise. I've worked with both. Well written, well factored code is a dream to work with.

taeric 3y ago
Well written code is a dream to work with, pretty much period? Such that, I don't really disagree; but this general thought exercise is dominated by people talking past each other. Don't get me wrong, I am not aiming for the entire program to be line noise. I've seen more attempts to make the command line argument parsing "clear and easy to read" such that "no mistakes could possibly creep in" than I'd care to admit, though. Probably the best example of what I mean here, though, is summed up in the quote from https://gigamonkeys.com/book/a-few-format-recipes.html https://gigamonkeys.com/book/a-few-format-recipes.html regarding FORMAT. "While FORMAT's control strings can be cryptic, at least a single FORMAT expression doesn't clutter things up too badly."
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  IME, pretty much, period, yes. I didn't provide evidence because I didn't have any except from my experience which I ask you to take at my word, and I'll take you on your word that's something I'm unaware of what can happen to undo the value of well structured code in a way I've not encountered. Your example is something I understand (though I'm not a Lisp programmer) but I'm certainly not allergic to a few judicious DSLs to clean things up. Without evidence on either side there's no point continuing this but it was a nice answer, thanks. I wish we could discuss this in person.
  - taeric 3y ago
    I doubt we are in heavy disagreement. My point was not meant for whole programs to be done in this way. I am a heavy advocate for judicious use of the likes of XPath (or JMESPath or JSONPath/whatever) at the border to deconstruct things. Similarly, having a query language instead of manually learning how to do all of the necessary merge and sort operations for many things makes a ton of sense. Does this mean I think DSLs are a panacea? No. Not at all. And I meant my point to be that we are in agreement that well written code is better in pretty much all cases. Be it well factored, or well whatever. Would indeed be a fun thing for more conversations. I am always amused and amazed at how many strawman programs people have had the misfortune of working with.

Well written code is a dream to work with, pretty much period? Such that, I don't really disagree; but this general thought exercise is dominated by people talking past each other. Don't get me wrong, I am not aiming for the entire program to be line noise. I've seen more attempts to make the command line argument parsing "clear and easy to read" such that "no mistakes could possibly creep in" than I'd care to admit, though. Probably the best example of what I mean here, though, is summed up in the quote from https://gigamonkeys.com/book/a-few-format-recipes.html https://gigamonkeys.com/book/a-few-format-recipes.html regarding FORMAT. "While FORMAT's control strings can be cryptic, at least a single FORMAT expression doesn't clutter things up too badly."

_a_a_a_ 3y ago
IME, pretty much, period, yes. I didn't provide evidence because I didn't have any except from my experience which I ask you to take at my word, and I'll take you on your word that's something I'm unaware of what can happen to undo the value of well structured code in a way I've not encountered. Your example is something I understand (though I'm not a Lisp programmer) but I'm certainly not allergic to a few judicious DSLs to clean things up. Without evidence on either side there's no point continuing this but it was a nice answer, thanks. I wish we could discuss this in person.
- taeric 3y ago
  I doubt we are in heavy disagreement. My point was not meant for whole programs to be done in this way. I am a heavy advocate for judicious use of the likes of XPath (or JMESPath or JSONPath/whatever) at the border to deconstruct things. Similarly, having a query language instead of manually learning how to do all of the necessary merge and sort operations for many things makes a ton of sense. Does this mean I think DSLs are a panacea? No. Not at all. And I meant my point to be that we are in agreement that well written code is better in pretty much all cases. Be it well factored, or well whatever. Would indeed be a fun thing for more conversations. I am always amused and amazed at how many strawman programs people have had the misfortune of working with.