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Comment by abledon | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the designers of the systems , after becoming so bored with the status quo, begin to fetishize the sleek hidden thing that is scroll bar right now ... like when coders are writing algorithms for say, 10-15 years I bet their code gets a lot more compact and sleek looking , almost akin to tight 3 character variable leet code solutions etc.. maybe this is just the same phenomenon tearing its head in the design world , except instead of compact code blocks its compact UIs that , to a certain metric, yes , the designer has pushed further on a certain metric ex; see more of the application window cause scroll bar is hidden, but loses sight of what is lost.

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> like when coders are writing algorithms for say, 10-15 years I bet their code gets a lot more compact and sleek looking , almost akin to tight 3 character variable leet code solutions

I have never seen that to be the case unless in an environment with very heavy constraints like embedded. If anything, a competent programmer 10-15 years in would skew towards more descriptive and clear variable naming as they've been burned in the past by having to maintain some of that "leet" code.

Right on. Readability is a virtue in its own right, compactness is not.

'Cute' code that leverages language features in creative and surprising ways, generally belongs on code golf competitions, not production systems. If your code is so 'clever' that only you can understand it, that means you're a bad programmer, not a good one. (That's not to say you should avoid making appropriate use of advanced language features for fear of ignorant readers, though. That's another matter.)

Ada was far ahead of the game here, explicitly prioritising readability over writeability, in its language design.

With all that said, an experienced programmer may feel less need to write comments, as their own familiarity with the problem-domain and with the language will be well developed.

> when coders are writing algorithms for say, 10-15 years I bet their code gets a lot more compact and sleek looking

If those coders are like me their code becomes more verbose, less clever, more obvious, less dependent on the quirks of the programming language I use. The reason is that it's easier for me and the other developers in the team to read and understand what it does.

On my way to here I really hated many geeky clever and brilliant pieces of code I found in projects I inherited. They made me and my customers lose days at decoding all that brilliance.

> coders are writing algorithms for say, 10-15 years I bet their code gets a lot more compact and sleek looking , almost akin to tight 3 character variable leet code solutions etc..

What are you talking about? I've been programming a long time, and clean, readable code with clear, descriptive variable names gives me a stiffy. It suggests a more meticulous mind than mine wrote it.

You know who writes the worst Gordian-knot code? Engineers from other disciplines who learned programming as a means to do other engineering calculation. Smart guys, but it's a pain keeping track of what i1, i2, i3, and i4 mean, or their 1970s FORTRAN program flow.

Actually, the worst are mathematicians. Go find some quant code.

> but loses sight of what is lost.

Literally in this case :)

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