Hacker News Reader

Comment by speckledjim | Hacker News Reader

I think it is. If people haven't learnt yet that the single most important skill you need as a programmer is being able to read any code, in any language, and take a good guess at what it does, be able to hold abstract programming concepts in your head, and match them up to random code listings you have never seen before....

Before you can write code, you need to know how to read it.

View on HN

I'm sure no one is disagreeing with the importance of knowing how to read code. I'm just saying that Java makes it harder than it needs to be. If your argument is that that's a good thing, then where does that argument end?

(Probably with Perl, I guess...)

...sorry Perl guys. Couldn't resist.

You want to have a look at the APL / J / K family, where functions like |/0(0|+)\ that compute the maximum-consecutive-sum (honest!) are the norm.

Maybe you couldn't resist because you're nostalgic? Read-only Perl went out with the 1990's, unless you're talking about golf (which FYI is done for the challenge of it - it's not for production).

I recently had the great displeasure of working on a 20,000 odd line class. You cannot keep 20,000 lines in your head, it's an extreme challenge.

Each method only had tiny differences but spotting them, as pivo's original comment argues, is a total nightmare.

Refactoring brought it in at 1,500 lines. Now you can glance at any method and see the actual difference to the default that they do.

Are you seriously suggesting there's little difference between a programming language that encourages 20,000 line behemoths filled with dross compared to a concise 1,500 line program. That there's not a massive mental overhead to reading through what is essentially a book compared to a short essay?

As that's what's being discussed, but you don't seem to get it.

There's reading code, and there's reading pointless code.

Java does no such thing as "encourages 20,000 line behemoths filled with dross". Bad programmers do.

If you're creating several methods that only differ a little bit, you're doing something stupid. In any language.

Bad programmers create bad code. The language is totally irrelevant.

It's really not irrelevant.

There's a reason that people aren't programming in COBOL or BASIC.

Yes, the reason is the runtimes for them suck, or aren't needed.

If there was a decent runtime for BASIC or COBOL, which gave real world advantages over everything else, I'd switch to BASIC or COBOL in a heart beat.

I'm a programmer. The language I use is pretty irrelevant. If It starts looking ugly, I'd just write a cross compiler. This is not rocket science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com