What does code readability mean?

Re:What does code readability mean? by Verdex_3 on Monday January 08, 2018 @12:36PM (#16098329)

What's the alternative though? Write your code such that people subjectively find it easy to read? Then you have to know the set of all people who are going to read your code AND how their internal (and possibly inconsistent) "easy" function works AND those people can never change personally AND no additional people can be added to that set unless they match someone else's "easy" function AND the sum of all the readers' "easy" functions have to result in at least some chunk of code being "easy".

At least with an objective criteria anyone who doesn't understand your code has something objective they can get better at in order to understand your code. And this is something that everyone can synchronize on from now and here to infinity and everywhere.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What does code readability mean? by yebyen on Monday January 08, 2018 @01:24PM (#16098647)

I don't think you can solve complex problems and guarantee the solutions are easy to understand. (You've hit the nail on the head.)

But you can absolutely solve many complex problems without straying outside of the set of simple arrangements or simple configurations of purely simple solutions. It may still be hard to understand. It was probably hard to write, too.

It should not be hard to refactor, if at all possible, when the scope of the problem has predictably changed later on.

[ Parent | on HN ]