* 2010-02-17 12:45 (+0100), Bram Moolenaar wrote: > One of the most important aspects of a programming or scripting > language is that it's easy to read back. Only then can one figure out > what it's doing exactly and easily spot mistakes. Both Perl and Lisp > fail miserably on this aspect.
Are there some reliable sources which indicate that Perl and Lisp code are not usually read, debugged or fixed after the code has been initially written? Or is there a general consensus or verifiable data that fixing problems in Perl or Lisp code takes more time than fixing problems in code written in other languages? "Failing miserably", as you put it, sounds like there is a clear and somewhat objectively measurable difference. I have no answers to those but I sense a danger in discussions like this. It can easily go to "my favourite language is a very clear one" and "other people's code and favourite languages are unreadable." My opinion is that a familiar coding style and familiar language make code readable. And then also the programming style of not doing too much different things in a tiny part of code. Perl "fails miserably" with me because I still haven't had time to actually learn it. But I think it's me who fails. I'm relatively new to Lisp but I find it beautiful and clear. It's often verbose and macros hide boring repetitive code and complexity. Then again, I have had motivation to learn and understand Lisp. Motivation helps a lot. :-) > Unfortunately, programmers are proud of creating something that other > people have a hard time figuring out what it does. I can't comment about the pride but I'd like to ask what do you think affects more, coding style or language? I'm asking because in the previous paragraph you spoke about languages' readability and now you switched to programmers. Maybe you mean that some programmers try to do clever and powerful tricks which do a lot of things with a tiny piece of code but are difficult to understand quickly (?). -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
