[Pdx-pm] Readable code
James marks
jamarks at jamarks.com
Mon Jan 10 22:55:56 PST 2005
Greetings all,
I'm new to Perl and fairly new to programming as well and I'd like to
pose a question for all of you experienced and knowledgeable Perl
programmers:
Recently, a number of books I've read about, or referring to, writing
code - Steve McConnell's "Code Complete" and Paul Graham's "Hackers and
Painters," are two examples - emphasize writing readable code. An
excerpt from "Hackers and Painters" illustrates my point:
"Source code, too, should explain itself. If I could get people to
remember just one quote about programming, it would be the one at the
beginning of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
" 'Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally
for machines to execute.' "
You need to have empathy not just for your users, but for your readers.
It's in your interest, because you'll be one of them. Many a hacker has
written a program only to find on returning to it six months later that
he has no idea how it works. I know several people who've sworn off
Perl after such experiences."
I've gotten in the habit of breaking my code out into lots of
subroutines because I've found that makes it much easier for me to read
and troubleshoot, a practice that seemed to be reinforced in Code
Complete. Now, however, as I read books on Perl and talk to Perl coders
I'm finding that placing an emphasis on writing readable code, and
breaking code out into lots of subroutines doesn't seem to be
considered "the Perl way" of doing things. The emphasis seems to be
tighter and tighter code, sometimes - it seems to me - at the expense
of readability (especially for those new to Perl).
I'd be very interested in your thoughts and suggestions regarding terse
code, readable code, verbose code, etc...
Thanks,
James
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