What makes code "readable"? (was Re: Python vs. Perl, which is better to learn?)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "James" == James J Besemer <jb at cascade-sys.com> writes:

    James> However, for short names to be appropriate, the useage
    James> needs to be simple and very local in scope.  (Of course
    James> where to draw the line is a judgement call).

My experience in X?Emacs has been that the "many hands" eventually
expand some scopes; not everybody is a good programmer, or they may
have an "important" bug that needs "fixed right now".  So you should
also consider how likely it is that somebody with a different design
sense than you will work on the code later.


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
 My nostalgia for Icon makes me forget about any of the bad things.  I don't
have much nostalgia for Perl, so its faults I remember.  Scott Gilbert c.l.py