If readability of code doesn't matter, why have I seen so much angst
within communities of developers indentation styles, identifier
spelling, and line breaks? None of them make a bit of difference in
the generated object code..
I think Sturgeon's Law may apply here: "90% of everything is crap"...
The fact that there's a lot of bad, "write-only" code out there (and
I'm certainly responsible for some of it..) does not preclude the
existance of quite readable code. Maybe I've just been lucky, but
I've had the good fortune to work in environments where my coworkers
and mentors cared about the readability of code (and got on my case
when I didn't live up to their standards).
Programming languages are a mixture of ambiguity and precision. They
specify certain things very precisely, and leave other details up to
the implementation of the language. Higher level languages are, in
general, higher in ambiguity, and lower in precision. Sometimes this
is good, sometimes this is bad.
Memory management comes to mind as a prime example. The only
purpose of calling free() is to release memory. It serves no
expository purpose. This is clearly shown by the fact that
garbage collected languages do without it.
On the contrary, "free()" makes an expository statement that "this
object should no longer be used by the program". Often, that isn't
necessary, but (for instance) if you are concerned about the exact
memory usage of a program, the presence of explicit free() calls makes
it easier to understand, and measure, what's going on..
Don Knuth makes a similar argument in defense of his continued use of
assembly language for a hypothetical computer for the exposition of
algorithms in his continued revisions to The Art of Computer
Programming. See the "Why have a machine language" section of
http://www-cs-staff.Stanford.EDU/~knuth/mmix.html ..
The very fact that you have to be taught this should make clear
that the actual purpose of code is instructing machines, not people.
People hardly ever forget that the purpose of writing text is
communication.
I'm not sure I follow the logic here -- all it make clear to me is
that the teachers/mentors/etc., care about the quality of the work..
The amateur singers in the theatrical productions I've been involved
with regularly needed to be reminded to improve their diction. I
would take it that you would argue that the words they sing don't
actually matter...
- Bill
