4 ms·
> Lyons is skeptical about claims that readability increases the chances that a language will attract a large audience. The article makes an important point bu
by bithive123 14y ago
> Lyons is skeptical about claims that readability increases the chances that a language will attract a large audience.
The article makes an important point but I've always interpreted readability in terms of expressiveness: To what (admittedly qualitative) extent does the language help a fluent developer write readable code (where each line flows naturally from the next)?
Rather than attracting people to the language, it's about hitting that sweet spot where the code is highly "compressed" yet still has a natural syntax without being opaque. I find that the syntactic overhead imposed by some languages (i.e. those that don't require indentation or which lack array literals, for instance) has less of an effect on readability than the author's skill. PHP has these flaws but can still be quite readable, and in that sense readability should be attractive.
- Evbn 14y agoWhich language has "natural syntax"? Answer: the one with the most similar syntax to the one you know best.
- ritchiea 14y agoMaybe it's because I was introduced to both Ruby and Python early on in my career but I disagree. There are languages that encourage writing semantic code and thus making readability a function of how close the code is to an english description of how to implement the task at hand.
- Gormo 14y agoSo, because you're most familiar with English syntax, the most readable programming languages are the ones which most closely approximate it? Doesn't sound like a disagreement with Evbn's point.
- ritchiea 14y agoDo you use any programming languages that don't use English syntax?
- Gormo 14y agoI don't use any programming languages that do use English syntax - I'm not even aware of any such programming languages - and I don't really understand the position that the optimal language for issuing instructions to a computer is the one that looks most like a language meant to facilitate dialogue among human beings.