Ask HN: How important is code readability? - symbolepro
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airbreather
Interesting point is 40+ years ago cpu/memory was very expensive and software
engineering and coding labour cheap, relatively speaking. In this scenario the
code often could look however it needed to fit into available resources.
"Clever" coders wrote terse and often wrote obtuse code that fit into whatever
hardware resources were available. Maintenance or modification at times was
one step forwards and two steps back with all sorts of side effects revealing
themselves.

These days, the software engineering and maintainers are very expensive
relative to the cost of the hardware, so the code should use all the memory
and resources it needs to be as readable and maintainable as possible.

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sidcool
Very very important. Most of the life of a software is in maintenance mode.
This needs enhancements, bug fixes and refactoring. Readability of code
significantly affects the time taken to make these changes.

