Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> Source code exists for people first, computers second. If this were
> not the case, we'd all just write code in machine language. High level
> languages exist *explicitly* to make it easier for people to
> comprehend computation tasks. Communicating algorithms, both to the
> reader who is not the author, and later to the author of the code
> himself, is why we use high level languages.
I think that's going a little too far. We use high-level languages
because it is easier, because they are more expressive. That is, of
course, strongly related to their readability and capability to be used
to communicate ideas, but those abilities are _not_ the primary
motivation for high-level languages.
However, readability and communication _are_ the reason that good
programmers use expressive variable and function names, follow code
layout styles and so on.
> Maybe Mr. Rescorla doesn't believe it, but I do, and it is the
> doctrine taught in every decent CS curriculum in the world.
It is also what programmers learn from programming (or, at least, some
do. I never did a CS degree :-).
Cheers,
Ben.
--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi
