Howreadable - Speaker Deck

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Daniel van Berzon @ocastahq ocasta.com @dvberzon vanberzon.com

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Help us discover what makes code readable!

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What they have in common are rules Rules Broken

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Grammar rules Prescriptive Descriptive

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Prescriptive Arbitrary grammar rule that prescribes the way people should speak "Never end a sentence with a preposition!"

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What is he on about?

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What is he on about? preposition

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What is he on about? preposition About what is he on?

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What is he on about? preposition About what is he on? On about what is he? !

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"Never end a sentence with a preposition!" Joshua Poole (1646) John Dryden (1672) Prescriptive What is he on about?

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Descriptive Evidence-based Grammar rule that describes the way people speak naturally. "English word order is: Subject - Verb - Object"

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Penny eats pizza Penny pizza eats Eats penny pizza Eats pizza penny Pizza penny eats Pizza eats penny

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Penny eats pizza Penny pizza eats Eats penny pizza Eats pizza penny Pizza penny eats Pizza eats penny

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Penny eats pizza Subject - Verb - Object Descriptive Penny eats Pizza

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Readable Code Rules

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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

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Prescriptive • Arbitrary • Opinions as facts • No evidence

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Descriptive rules For readable code?

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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

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What do we measure? Can developer predict output of code? Time takes them to understand the code

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Comments // foo Are /*comments*/ readable?

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Comments // foo Are /*comments*/ readable?

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Comments // foo Are /*comments*/ readable? 75% 50% } }

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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

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• Developer • JavaScript • 10 minutes howreadable.com You can help!

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Help us discover what makes code readable! howreadable.com

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Daniel van Berzon @ocastahq ocasta.com @dvberzon vanberzon.com Thank you! howreadable.com