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Some history might help. Go was created largely as a reaction to writing server side C++. I have sympathy after writing but mostly reading C++ code bases. I swore never again.

I react in horror to the features being added to CUDA and SyCL to make them closer to C++.

I still hate C++ with a passion, grepping around in gecko is much harder than servo.

> because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code.

It seems to me that what Pike is getting at here is how easy it is to build mental models of the code, the language, the underlying system, down through all its layers, and, yes, the code's original author and any subsequent authors.

I share your frustration at the subjectivity of readability claims. There's actually starting to be good academic research on code readability, for instance this paper:

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/p/weimer-tse2010-readabi...

Oh, or this investigation into programming language syntax for learnability!

> Recent studies in the literature have shown that syntax remains a significant barrier to novice computer science students in the field. While this syntax barrier is known to exist, whether and how it varies across programming languages has not been carefully investigated. For this article, we conducted four empirical studies on programming language syntax as part of a larger analysis into the, so called, programming language wars.

http://neverworkintheory.org/2014/01/29/stefik-siebert-synta...

As someone maintaining an 18 year old code base, I've long held the same opinions as Rob. I often describe myself as the dumbest person on my team and then go on to say how fortunate it was that I was here first. All my smart people need to dumb stuff down enough that I can understand it. Which means we have a prayer of supporting it.

Obviously I can't force everything through that filter, some problems require complex solutions.

Hacker News is full of really bright people who like the expressiveness of Haskell et al. So it's not surprising that Rob's not going over well here. Just saying that us dumb people really appreciate his efforts.

> Hacker News is full of really bright people who like the expressiveness of Haskell et al. So it's not surprising that Rob's not going over well here. Just saying that us dumb people really appreciate his efforts.

Some of us use Haskell because we're also dumb people.

There is very little, to no, emetic all evidence either way. Take all of the demands for generics and see if you can find you can find any emperical data to back up the demands.

> He made the claim that more features hurt readability (~6:10), because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code. To make that kind of claim without qualifications is just ridiculous - if it were true, why add any feature to a programming language at all?

Because if you didn't the programming language would never do anything at all.

That one part was a weak part. If he claimed that having less features helps writeability I would have completely agreed though. It might take more writing to accomplish what you want, but frequently the choices you are making are a lot simpler, so you spend less time on them and more time just writing the code that you need to write.

"If he claimed that having less features helps writeability I would have completely agreed though."

I suspect most people disagree with you and think, for example, that the features in high level languages make it easier to program in those languages than in low level ones.