Reading code and writing code

[Erik Max Francis]

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:

> This is not the same real world I live in!
> 
> In my real world, I probably spend at least 10x as much time READING
> code as I do WRITING it.  I certainly read more of my own code than of
> anyone elses, but I still have to *read* it when I come back to it
> after
> more than a few minutes... especially when it is a few months or
> years.
> 
> A significant fraction of that reading time is spent looking at pieces
> of paper with toner on them; and much of the remaining time uses
> 'less',
> or a webbrowser, or some other non-editor application.  Even in an
> editor, I like to look at a page full of code to grok the sense, and
> mostly not move the cursor around to cause bracket matches to
> highlight.

But in that same real world, part and parcel with automatic completion
and parenthesis matching is autoindentation.  Well-written Lisp (or
Lisp-like) code will be indented in a reasonable way, assisted by your
editor, that make it easy to read, whether or not you are looking at it
in the editor, or with less/more, or print it out afterwards.

> I LIKE the conveniences that good editors provide, including matching
> parentheses and other structures.  But the amount of help that this
> can
> possibly provide in my life experience is pretty small.

Sounds like you're using the wrong editor, then :-).

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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