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Comment by emblaegh | Hacker News Reader

People in this thread seem to be conflating "it's less readable" with "it's written in a dialect I'm not used to". The samples are perfectly readable to anyone who spent some time with a languages that offers similar functionality, other criticisms notwithstanding.

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Yes, but now you are requiring people to know both Python AND Haskell/StandardML/Whatever in order to maintain your Python app.

Python is not just a "base" language, it's also a set of patterns for how you go about writing code in it. Conforming to those patterns to some degree makes for (subjectively) nice code, and (objectively) easier to understand code because of the familiarity.

> People in this thread seem to be conflating "it's less readable" with "it's written in a dialect I'm not used to".

I have long been arguing that this is exactly what "readability" means. Readability is completely subjective, and depends on personal experience with various languages, types of syntax and so on.

I am okay with your definition of "readability", but only insofar as you use it to criticize the reader.

Code should be judged on its own merit, and in that case your definition of "readability" doesn't really help us go anywhere.

Code readability can’t be judged unless you consider to whom it’s meant to be readable.

Totally agreed.

Simplicity =/= familiarity

I use Haskell as my main language. I’m very familiar with its concepts. I’ve also used Python, so I’m familiar with that too. And this Python code strikes me as singularly unreadable, both compared to its ‘non-functional’ equivalent, and to the corresponding Haskell.

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