It's Harder to Read Code Than Write It

Re:It's Harder to Read Code Than Write It by djmips on Monday September 05, 2022 @05:45PM (#32729862)

You must live in an utopia and/or are very good at reading code. My experience sees a lot of code around me get re-written because of poor comprehension skills.

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Re:It's Harder to Read Code Than Write It by uberman on Monday September 05, 2022 @09:05PM (#32731392)

I'm not sure it is fair to say that because we disagree I must live in a fantasy land.

I can read almost any block of code from almost any language and I bet almost everyone can as well.

You typically dont need to be able to even write code in a given language to understand it.

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Re:It's Harder to Read Code Than Write It by djmips on Monday September 05, 2022 @10:08PM (#32731862)

I didn't say you lived in a fantasy land but in a different better situation.

Of course programmers can read code and understand the atoms but can they decipher a big system? Even 12 year old children can read English but what is their understanding of something complex written in English? In my experience, I've often run into peers who are not good at diving into systems. IE to clarify and try to get on the same page. I'm contending that the OP was talking about reverse engineering and I feel like a lot of developers are better at engineering than reverse engineering.

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Re:It's Harder to Read Code Than Write It by uberman on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @07:18AM (#32735531)

Read the post again. The author is clearly talking about smaller blocks of code and speaks of edge cases and AI generated code blocks not large systems. By saying "of course programmers can read code" are you not essentially agreeing with me?

By the way, the very definition of utopia is that it is an imagined fantasy land and most often used in negative ways to suggest delusion.

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Re:It's Harder to Read Code Than Write It by djmips on Sunday September 11, 2022 @05:55PM (#32803647)

You could for example be working at a University and that might be a dream job / utopia. Maybe everyone does things the 'right' way. My anecdata is different than yours.

This is more in line with what I've experienced. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

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