Howreadable

A lightening talk explaining the motivation behind our "howreadable" experiment and encouraging participation.

Please take at https://howreadable.com

Transcript

1. Daniel van Berzon @ocastahq ocasta.com @dvberzon vanberzon.com
2. Help us discover what makes code readable!
5. What they have in common are rules Rules Broken
6. Grammar rules Prescriptive Descriptive
7. Prescriptive Arbitrary grammar rule that prescribes the way people should speak "Never end a sentence with a preposition!"
8. What is he on about?
9. What is he on about? preposition
10. What is he on about? preposition About what is he on?
11. What is he on about? preposition About what is he on? On about what is he? !
12. "Never end a sentence with a preposition!" Joshua Poole (1646) John Dryden (1672) Prescriptive What is he on about?
13. Descriptive Evidence-based Grammar rule that describes the way people speak naturally. "English word order is: Subject - Verb - Object"
14. Penny eats pizza Penny pizza eats Eats penny pizza Eats pizza penny Pizza penny eats Pizza eats penny
15. Penny eats pizza Penny pizza eats Eats penny pizza Eats pizza penny Pizza penny eats Pizza eats penny
16. Penny eats pizza Subject - Verb - Object Descriptive Penny eats Pizza
17. Readable Code Rules
18. Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide: // bad function sayHi(name) { return 'How are you, ' + name + '?'; } // good function sayHi(name) { return `How are you, ${name}?`; } Template strings give you a readable, concise syntax ... “ ” Often mentions readability
19. Prescriptive • Arbitrary • Opinions as facts • No evidence
20. Descriptive rules For readable code?
21. Online experiment to find descriptive rules for code readability Measures readability of coding constructs Showing code snippets to developers Measuring how easily they read them
22. What do we measure? Can developer predict output of code? Time takes them to understand the code
23. Comments // foo Are /*comments*/ readable?
24. Comments // foo Are /*comments*/ readable?
25. Comments // foo Are /*comments*/ readable? 75% 50% } }
26. Experiment is live Measuring 11 constructs > 500 participants Need more participants to get better results Comments Naming Pure functions Abstraction Boolean algebra Ternary operators Chaining methods If statements Inline functions Early return Operator precedence
27. • Developer • JavaScript • 10 minutes howreadable.com You can help!
28. Help us discover what makes code readable! howreadable.com
29. Daniel van Berzon @ocastahq ocasta.com @dvberzon vanberzon.com Thank you! howreadable.com