DEV Community

Discussion on: Three Arguments for Why You Should Write More

Collapse
 
sandordargo profile image
Sandor Dargo

I agree with your article, but I'm troll enough to make a remark on this phrase: "I don't mean write more code. I mean write for humans."

According to some of the finest computer scientists, code is written primarily for humans:

“Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute.” ― Donald Knuth

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." - Abelson & Sussman, "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"

Are their points still valid? That might be the topic of another article.

Collapse
 
berkmann18 profile image
Maximilian Berkmann

They are still valid, why?
Because, unless you only do code golf and throw away all the code you write, you'll be writing something that someone (including the future you) will be reading and trying to maintain, fix and what not so it's important that the code is readable.

One might say, your code should be self-documenting so no documentation is needed, I'll argue that it would depend on several things but we're not discussing about documenting code vs not doing it.

Collapse
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

For sure, no?
Otherwise no one would use say... TypeScript? Which contributes nothing to the runtime.
Nor would anyone ever leave comments.
One can even make the argument they would not use a high level language at all, but that's the iffy one.