> reading like a sentence.
But therein lies the problem. Let's forget about programming for a moment and talk human languages instead.
In english, you say "Cheese omelet". In dutch, you say "Kaas omelet". In french you say "Omelette du fromage".
Neither is better than the other; it's just how it is. A native english speaker who is learning both dutch and french may posit the feeling that dutch feels 'more natural' and has 'more obvious word order'. But I'm sure you'd agree that this is just based on happenstance; simply because english and dutch so happen to match. There's nothing intrinsically better about putting the cheese in front of the omelet instead of after it. Nevertheless, for a native english speaker, dutch will seem simpler... __right up until the moment you turn "native", and you no longer translate each word on its own back to english first__. Once you've hit that level, there's no difference. At all. You hear the words and your brain visualizes a cheese omelet instantaneously.
The same logic applies to programming langauges. "It reads like a sentence"? What are you on about? If I see this code:
account.deposit(Dollar.of(100));
I know what that means, __instantly__, in the exact same fashion someone who is entirely fluent in both french and english makes absolutely no difference whatsoever between Omelette du Fromage and Cheese Omelet. Simply because I program enough javascript, java, C#, (C-esque syntax) that __THIS__ is natural to me.
Rails in particular is egregiously in violation of this ridiculous aim to make it look like english (but, fortunately, nothing so crazy as AppleScript). Rails prides itself on being able to write `5.minutes` - they monkey patch numbers to add a minutes function.
But in programmese, of any flavour, that makes very little sense. You want to create a value of type Minutes, or in some languages, you want to create a value by using a function from the namespace Minutes, and this operation that requires a parameter (the amount of minutes). Putting the param _before_ the namespace / class / type / function name / whatever your programming language uses here - is _highly exotic_ - something very very very few programming languages do. Except Rails (I'm going by memory here - I believe the minutes function on numeric types is a monkeypatch Rails adds, it's not stock Ruby). They do it, apparently (in that they call it out in their tutorials) because "5 minutes" reads like english and leave it at that - clearly insinuating that 'reads like english' is upside.
No it isn't.
And that's why "account deposit: 100 dollars." is by no means "easier to read" simply because it reads like an english sentence.