4 ms·

A sad story, but easily explained -- there are books meant to teach you how to read, and there are books meant to be read, for entertainment, education, or insp

by lutusp 13y ago

A sad story, but easily explained -- there are books meant to teach you how to read, and there are books meant to be read, for entertainment, education, or inspiration. The author obviously didn't approach programming in the way people approach reading -- small steps first, letters, then words, then sentences, then ideas. And finally, after mastering reading, one can try writing one's own ideas. It's not self-evident how to do this in the programming world, because unlike the world of books, programming is a relatively new discipline. But, just as with reading, there are small programming steps, and there's a distinction between reading and writing. One must be a skilled reader before presuming to write. This will be easier in the future as programming matures, and when being able to program comes to be seen as print literacy is seen now -- a default ability in an educated person.

gopher1 13y ago
I also think he's overestimating the degree to which all programmers, even good ones, can understand someone else's code easily. In fact, most of the effort being put into understanding how to code properly is meant to make it easy for other programmers to be able to read someone else's code and know what's going on, simply because it's extremely hard to do as things currently stand. Why is it a best practice to write functions that only do one thing? Because as soon as the function is doing multiple things, it can get very very confusing as to what exactly is going on, even for the best programmers.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > In fact, most of the effort being put into understanding how to code properly is meant to make it easy for other programmers to be able to read someone else's code and know what's going on, simply because it's extremely hard to do as things currently stand. Yes, and in that connection I want to mention narcissism, which I personally think is a big obstacle standing in the way of collaborative programming, in the way of seeing one's code as community property that must be understood by everyone involved. Narcissists, more numerous than most people realize, think their code is much better than code created by ordinary people, to the degree that they see no point in making it comprehensible to mere mortals. Also, consistent with the true nature of narcissists, they're secretly insecure about themselves and their abilities, which is the real motive for making their code incomprehensible -- to do otherwise might reveal how perfectly ordinary their code really is, and they really are. > Why is it a best practice to write functions that only do one thing? Because as soon as the function is doing multiple things, it can get very very confusing as to what exactly is going on, even for the best programmers. That's a good argument in favor of OO programming, where one writes a class instead of a mere function, thus avoiding the trap of trying to create multi-purpose functions.
  - mattfenwick 13y ago
    > That's a good argument in favor of OO programming, where one writes a class instead of a mere function, thus avoiding the trap of trying to create multi-purpose functions. I disagree there (that "That's a good argument in favor of OO programming"). What if one creates a multi-purpose class? How is that any better than a multi-purpose function? IMHO the point -- do one thing -- is applicable to many paradigms.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > What if one creates a multi-purpose class? How is that any better than a multi-purpose function? Easily answered -- look at a class meant to deal with String objects. It encapsulates a string object plus any number of functions that deal with strings. Compare this to a function that does to a string what a class does, but necessarily under the command of a passed flag that instructs it which action to take. The latter is much less satisfactory from a comprehensibility standpoint. I say this because I was programming before there were classes, or anything resembling high-level structure (I wrote Apple Writer in assembly language, a language utterly lacking in structure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer), so I've watched a number of revolutions in programming over the decades. The idea of a class associating a data type and functions meant to deal with it seemed to me to solve any number of problems -- problems I had to deal with in various clunky ways before that development. > I disagree there (that "That's a good argument in favor of OO programming"). But it is. The idea that all functions having any special meaning to (for example) strings would be enclosed within an object also containing the string to be operated on, greatly reduced the confusion that preceded it. One can make too much out of the OO paradigm, but the basic idea is sound and based on pragmatic thinking.
      - andreasvc 13y ago
        Behind the scenes using a method of an object is just syntactic sugar for calling a function with the object as the first argument. The modularity aspect is good but I think OO often leads to code that is difficult to read when there are many levels of inheritance, esp. in languages where you are forced to put everything in classes such as Java. Instead of the old spaghetti code you then get ravioli code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravioli_code#Ravioli_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravioli_code#Ravioli_code
- cliveowen 13y ago
  Exactly, code should be read like you would a math theorem, one symbol at a time. It's not a sentence where you read character after character and at the end of the line you know what those words mean. Every symbol has a deep meaning and expresses more than you probably think. In the same way, when you read a mathematical demonstration if you don't really stop and think about every single symbol you won't get the reasoning behind the whole thing.
yoha 13y ago
> small steps first, letters, then words, then sentences, then ideas. And finally, after mastering reading, one can try writing one's own ideas. Just a nitpick. You say one should first master reading, then master writing. But I think both go together; I would just reverse the logical order of the two concepts (small steps and reading-then-writing): - read letters - write letters - read words - write words - read sentences - write sentences - read ideas - write ideas Of course, it is not a fixed frame either, but it gives the main idea.
sgt101 13y ago
This is utterly counter to my experience, both in metaphor and reality. In terms of reading/writing, trying to write poetry and stories has given me huge insights into the work of others. My poems are dreadful, my stories silly, but I've learned what makes others so talented. In programming, writing is first, reading second. Creating good code is something that is learned through work. Reading and judging other peoples code requires great insight and sympathy; criticising something is easy. Understanding that they could have done it differently but chose not to for some very good reason is harder by far.
- lutusp 13y ago
  Well, this is obviously a matter of opinion, not science, but I think one would do well to read (examples) Hemingway or Clemens (a.k.a. Twain) before presuming to write something meant to be read by others. > My poems are dreadful, my stories silly, but I've learned what makes others so talented. I think one could learn skilled writing more quickly by reading than by writing, and without the esteem-crushing experience of seeing how badly one's own early experiments fall short. I emphasize that I'm talking about having an unrealistic expectation that one's own early writing serves as anything but an exercise to be quickly discarded -- referring to both programming and prose.
bcbrown 13y ago
>One must be a skilled reader before presuming to write. I disagree, somewhat. I think one cannot become a skilled code-reader without knowing how to write code. One cannot be a skilled code-writer without knowing how to read code, and having read a lot of code, but without having written any code, I don't think reading code provides any enlightenment. My small-steps progression would be writing Hello World, writing a smallish program, learning how to read code, writing code that you have to maintain, becoming skillful at reading code, becoming skillful at writing code. I agree with you on natural language, that one must be a skilled reader before writing. I think the reason I see a difference between code and natural language is that the baby-steps of writing code can be mapped onto speaking natural language. I don't think one could become a skilled reader before being a proficient speaker in one's native tongue.
- dhfjgkrgjg 13y ago
  C or ASM? You do realise on this site those languages dont exist, only Ruby, Haskell, Bracket-o-lisp variants, Go, Rust, and any other brogrammer ready shiny shiny. I didnt forget to add JS to the list - i dont really consider it a language, just a bad artifact of the web wars that sadly lived on.
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    Exactly what comment are you replying to here? I was actually tempted to comment about the language selection as well, but this post did mention that it was in the context of web development.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > One cannot be a skilled code-writer without knowing how to read code, and having read a lot of code, but without having written any code, I don't think reading code provides any enlightenment. You make some good points, but as just one counterexample, the famed distorting effect of BASIC on a beginning programmer is certainly made worse by allowing the student to write BASIC as well as read it. As to, say, Python, I guess this is less of an issue, and writing a bit of Python just to see what happens probably has a beneficial effect on comprehension. But, granted that point, I think reading and understanding the code of skilled programmers, before trying to write any significant code, is a very good idea. Otherwise one risks becoming trapped in classic beginner errors like laboriously processing individual data elements instead of looping through a list of them with one processing function (an error I saw any number of times while teaching programming).

by lutusp 13y ago

gopher1 13y ago

I also think he's overestimating the degree to which all programmers, even good ones, can understand someone else's code easily. In fact, most of the effort being put into understanding how to code properly is meant to make it easy for other programmers to be able to read someone else's code and know what's going on, simply because it's extremely hard to do as things currently stand. Why is it a best practice to write functions that only do one thing? Because as soon as the function is doing multiple things, it can get very very confusing as to what exactly is going on, even for the best programmers.

lutusp 13y ago
> In fact, most of the effort being put into understanding how to code properly is meant to make it easy for other programmers to be able to read someone else's code and know what's going on, simply because it's extremely hard to do as things currently stand. Yes, and in that connection I want to mention narcissism, which I personally think is a big obstacle standing in the way of collaborative programming, in the way of seeing one's code as community property that must be understood by everyone involved. Narcissists, more numerous than most people realize, think their code is much better than code created by ordinary people, to the degree that they see no point in making it comprehensible to mere mortals. Also, consistent with the true nature of narcissists, they're secretly insecure about themselves and their abilities, which is the real motive for making their code incomprehensible -- to do otherwise might reveal how perfectly ordinary their code really is, and they really are. > Why is it a best practice to write functions that only do one thing? Because as soon as the function is doing multiple things, it can get very very confusing as to what exactly is going on, even for the best programmers. That's a good argument in favor of OO programming, where one writes a class instead of a mere function, thus avoiding the trap of trying to create multi-purpose functions.
- mattfenwick 13y ago
  > That's a good argument in favor of OO programming, where one writes a class instead of a mere function, thus avoiding the trap of trying to create multi-purpose functions. I disagree there (that "That's a good argument in favor of OO programming"). What if one creates a multi-purpose class? How is that any better than a multi-purpose function? IMHO the point -- do one thing -- is applicable to many paradigms.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > What if one creates a multi-purpose class? How is that any better than a multi-purpose function? Easily answered -- look at a class meant to deal with String objects. It encapsulates a string object plus any number of functions that deal with strings. Compare this to a function that does to a string what a class does, but necessarily under the command of a passed flag that instructs it which action to take. The latter is much less satisfactory from a comprehensibility standpoint. I say this because I was programming before there were classes, or anything resembling high-level structure (I wrote Apple Writer in assembly language, a language utterly lacking in structure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer), so I've watched a number of revolutions in programming over the decades. The idea of a class associating a data type and functions meant to deal with it seemed to me to solve any number of problems -- problems I had to deal with in various clunky ways before that development. > I disagree there (that "That's a good argument in favor of OO programming"). But it is. The idea that all functions having any special meaning to (for example) strings would be enclosed within an object also containing the string to be operated on, greatly reduced the confusion that preceded it. One can make too much out of the OO paradigm, but the basic idea is sound and based on pragmatic thinking.
    - andreasvc 13y ago
      Behind the scenes using a method of an object is just syntactic sugar for calling a function with the object as the first argument. The modularity aspect is good but I think OO often leads to code that is difficult to read when there are many levels of inheritance, esp. in languages where you are forced to put everything in classes such as Java. Instead of the old spaghetti code you then get ravioli code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravioli_code#Ravioli_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravioli_code#Ravioli_code
cliveowen 13y ago
Exactly, code should be read like you would a math theorem, one symbol at a time. It's not a sentence where you read character after character and at the end of the line you know what those words mean. Every symbol has a deep meaning and expresses more than you probably think. In the same way, when you read a mathematical demonstration if you don't really stop and think about every single symbol you won't get the reasoning behind the whole thing.

yoha 13y ago

> small steps first, letters, then words, then sentences, then ideas. And finally, after mastering reading, one can try writing one's own ideas. Just a nitpick. You say one should first master reading, then master writing. But I think both go together; I would just reverse the logical order of the two concepts (small steps and reading-then-writing): - read letters - write letters - read words - write words - read sentences - write sentences - read ideas - write ideas Of course, it is not a fixed frame either, but it gives the main idea.

sgt101 13y ago

This is utterly counter to my experience, both in metaphor and reality. In terms of reading/writing, trying to write poetry and stories has given me huge insights into the work of others. My poems are dreadful, my stories silly, but I've learned what makes others so talented. In programming, writing is first, reading second. Creating good code is something that is learned through work. Reading and judging other peoples code requires great insight and sympathy; criticising something is easy. Understanding that they could have done it differently but chose not to for some very good reason is harder by far.

lutusp 13y ago
Well, this is obviously a matter of opinion, not science, but I think one would do well to read (examples) Hemingway or Clemens (a.k.a. Twain) before presuming to write something meant to be read by others. > My poems are dreadful, my stories silly, but I've learned what makes others so talented. I think one could learn skilled writing more quickly by reading than by writing, and without the esteem-crushing experience of seeing how badly one's own early experiments fall short. I emphasize that I'm talking about having an unrealistic expectation that one's own early writing serves as anything but an exercise to be quickly discarded -- referring to both programming and prose.

bcbrown 13y ago

>One must be a skilled reader before presuming to write. I disagree, somewhat. I think one cannot become a skilled code-reader without knowing how to write code. One cannot be a skilled code-writer without knowing how to read code, and having read a lot of code, but without having written any code, I don't think reading code provides any enlightenment. My small-steps progression would be writing Hello World, writing a smallish program, learning how to read code, writing code that you have to maintain, becoming skillful at reading code, becoming skillful at writing code. I agree with you on natural language, that one must be a skilled reader before writing. I think the reason I see a difference between code and natural language is that the baby-steps of writing code can be mapped onto speaking natural language. I don't think one could become a skilled reader before being a proficient speaker in one's native tongue.

dhfjgkrgjg 13y ago
C or ASM? You do realise on this site those languages dont exist, only Ruby, Haskell, Bracket-o-lisp variants, Go, Rust, and any other brogrammer ready shiny shiny. I didnt forget to add JS to the list - i dont really consider it a language, just a bad artifact of the web wars that sadly lived on.
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  Exactly what comment are you replying to here? I was actually tempted to comment about the language selection as well, but this post did mention that it was in the context of web development.
lutusp 13y ago
> One cannot be a skilled code-writer without knowing how to read code, and having read a lot of code, but without having written any code, I don't think reading code provides any enlightenment. You make some good points, but as just one counterexample, the famed distorting effect of BASIC on a beginning programmer is certainly made worse by allowing the student to write BASIC as well as read it. As to, say, Python, I guess this is less of an issue, and writing a bit of Python just to see what happens probably has a beneficial effect on comprehension. But, granted that point, I think reading and understanding the code of skilled programmers, before trying to write any significant code, is a very good idea. Otherwise one risks becoming trapped in classic beginner errors like laboriously processing individual data elements instead of looping through a list of them with one processing function (an error I saw any number of times while teaching programming).