[ale] perl, python, C, C++ old code readability

[James P. Kinney III]

I always get a giggle out of reading how "unreadable" language XYZ is to
someone who didn't write the code.

I don't include my self in the category of "programmer". I have not
studied any particular language in any great detail. As a physicist, I
use programs as tools to solve a deeper problem. As such, I have had to
work with stuff written in pascal, fortran, perl, C, C++, and even
basic. 

What I have gleaned over the years with having to start with someone
else's code base and extend or modify to suit my needs is the
readability depends not on the language, but the author. 

Many people who bang code have the project in their head. So they don't
bother with usable annotation or logical structure. It doesn't matter
what language it's in. The next poor schmoe who has to fix or add
something has a hard task.

It is true that some languages are more lexically difficult than others.
Perl certainly fits that category. Why else would they have an
obfuscated perl contest! But add proper comments and the obfuscation
becomes transparent. But the difficulty in the lexical syntax of some
languages is offset by their usefulness. 

It is often taught that C is a small language. True. But to be really
useful, one must know the libraries and their syntax. Now the language
has grown tremendously in size. C++ and it's classes can get enormous.
Fortran, well, what can I say?! Ditto for BASIC. They are the way they
are. As part of the graduate program in physics, I had to demonstrate
proficiency in either German, Russian, Fortran or BASIC for the language
requirement. Not to mention some C variants used by National Instruments
Lab View and a Pascal/C mutation in Origin.

It still boiled down to the skill of the previous writer.

-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and COO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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