What does code readability mean?
The author consistently compares code language style to literature language style, but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a helpful comparison at all.<p>Literature operates by an intractably complex interaction between the words written on the page and the mind of the reader. Exchanging a single word for another may totally alter the effect of a passage, based on factors like the meaning of the word, the associations the word has for each reader, and the aesthetic appearance and sound of the word.<p>Moreover, we have no objective way of measuring the effect of literature. We don&#x27;t have a test that can measure how much more empathetic I become after reading a novel, or how much more I understand the human experience.<p>Computer code typically has measurable outcomes. While &quot;readability&quot; may still be a relatively subjective measure, we can at least say &quot;these two versions of this function are equivalent&quot; if the <i>outcome</i> is the same - the array is sorted correctly, the transaction amount is calculated correctly, the graph is rendered with the same pixels.<p>This means that editing computer code is nothing at all like editing literature. The cliff-notes version of Macbeth can never produce the same effect in the mind of the reader as reading Macbeth -- but a function that is <i>subjectively</i> easier to read can be shown <i>objectively</i> to produce the same effect as the original function.