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> Brags about how easily he understands his giant ball of overly messy code (2- letter variables in the name of “semantic density”) @arcfide left one of my fav
by dahart 3y ago
> Brags about how easily he understands his giant ball of overly messy code (2- letter variables in the name of “semantic density”)
@arcfide left one of my favorite comments ever, in response to another comment similar to yours (for which the author apologized). I refer to this often.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571159
Just a couple of snippets:
“Don't complain that Chinese is ugly and unreadable just because you speak English as your native tongue.”
“The cost for replacing or deleting code should be as low as possible.”
“How can I get a code base that has more features but continues to shrink? By chasing smaller code. :-)”
- hnfong 3y ago> “Don't complain that Chinese is ugly and unreadable just because you speak English as your native tongue.” The analogy here slightly breaks down since there are billions of people who speak and read Chinese already, while apparently the coding style in question is more of a niche thing trying to justify itself. I don't know enough about APL or using 2-letter variables to comment on whether they're actually justified, but my personal hunch is that their usefulness is going to be limited to particular problem domains and people with particular inclinations. (The same goes for verbosity on the other extreme like particular Java projects...)