I don’t think I have to convince anyone that reading code is hard. Often its so hard we throw up our hands and rewrite it. There is a saying that “tech-debt is any code that you didn’t write”. Because reading code is hard.
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say: rewriting shipped-and-working code just because you find it hard to read is absolutely the wrong move. You are actively destroying learned knowledge embedded in that code. Knowledge is value.
Engineers who know that learned knowledge is value document their code. They document code because reading code is hard. Reading sentences describing why the code does what it does is easy. That is a way to protect your code from being rewritten and discarded—a way to protect the value you’ve created through your learning. When you find yourself learning about why an existing piece of code does what it does, and there isn’t documentation—go ahead and document it. Even without changing code you can add value to it.
I have the good fortune to be volunteering some time helping folks learn to code. I’m coming to a realization that—they actually know how to “code”. Or rather, they know how to think through a problem in its constituent steps. And they can break steps into smaller steps. What they don’t know is “how to speak computer”. The syntax trips them up constantly. And they don’t have a good map of concept—>syntax. This is why reading code is hard. And its why junior engineers out of college have, largely, the same problems. They may be better with syntax purely out of having spent more time with it, comfort, but they still lack a map that translates a concept into syntax. That is something that comes with confidence and experience.
When people say “Good code is eas(ier) to read” they aren’t saying that reading code is hard. They are saying that; this code is probably documented, and this code clearly demonstrates the concept the code is implementing. Bad code obfuscates what is really happening. Good code makes it front and center. Good code plainly states what was learned in order to write it and why it was written.
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