
The Trouble With ‘Readability’ - gruseom
http://akkartik.name/blog/readable-bad
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gruseom
I like how this article moves the discussion on what "readability" means (or
ought to mean) in code. Its point is that what matters is the intelligibility
of _programs_ , not individual lines or names. Most "readability" discussions
reduce to the same handful of beans: whitespace, comments, and descriptive
names. As if readable systems can be built out of those alone! They can't. And
so on larger scales, complexity is left to grow like weeds.

This is a variant of the bikeshed problem. It's hard to talk about whole-
program design, but easy to argue about indentation or criticize a short name.
Worse, some of the techniques that improve readability locally can end up
impeding it globally. What we badly need and would be very interesting is a
discourse around what makes an entire system easier to 'get'.

