On 3/16/2012 4:55, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:32:52 +0100, Kiuhnm wrote:
Pick up two math books about the same topic but on two different levels
(e.g. under-graduated and graduated). If you compare the proofs you'll
see that those in the higher-level book are almost always sketched. Why
is that? Because they're more readable for a mature reader.
No. They're not more readable. They simply have less to read (per proof),
or another way of putting it, you can fit more of the good stuff that the
experienced reader wants ("yes yes, I know about the associative law, get
to the part where you prove the Goldbach conjecture...") in the same
amount of space. The text is compressed by leaving out the parts that an
experienced reader can infer from her knowledge of the domain.
Since an expert can infer meaning more quickly than they can read the
actual words, this is a big win for efficiency. But the text is not more
readable, there's just less to read for a given result. The same amount,
or even more, brain processing occurs. It just happens in a different
part of the brain.
Maybe we should define *exactly* what readability is (in less then 500
lines, if possible).
According to your view, ASM code is more readable than Python code. It's
just that there's more to read in ASM.
Kiuhnm
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