Programmer Musings

The Myth of Code Anyone Can Read

I got into a conversation recently coming out of the Houston.pm user group meeting. As usual, we wandered over numerous technical topics, but one stuck out in my mind: whether or not to use more advanced or more complicated language idioms.

I've written about programming idioms and advanced code many times in the past (see below). Part of the reason for revisiting this topic repeatedly is a mindset that I have seen throughout my career. The idea is to write the code so that anyone can read it. Although this sounds reasonable at first, lowest common denominator code (LCDC) almost always results in a hard-to-maintain code base.

The Failure of LCDC

There are a number of reasons for this simple idea to fall apart. The most obvious comes from your experience of reading text in a human language. If we wanted to keep the text at a level that anyone could read, everything would need to be written at a first grade level. That's really the lowest level that you can claim that someone can read.

In human languages, text is written at different levels depending on the context and expected audience. Why would you expect programming to be different? Over the next few entries, I plan to cover some of the context that would change the way code should be written.

• Knowledge of programming fundamentals
• Understanding of different libraries
• Programmer specialization
• Business-specific logic
• Different audiences have different needs
• Rising tide

Over the course of the next few entries, I plan to show different places where writing lowest common denominator code (LCDC) would harm the project and, possibly, your business.

References

• What is a Programming Idiom?
• Idiomatic Programming
• Programming for Other Programmers
• Write for Your Audience
• Coding Style: Terse vs Verbose
• BPGB: Readable Code