TL;DR: Reading Code Is Harder Than Writing It

It's funny that computer languages are the only languages where one learns to write before learning to read. It's actually not uncommon for people to never really learn to read code. This seems a little unbalanced given that we actually read code much more frequently than we write it.

Even those who promote software as a craft sometimes fall into the trap of often talking about writing clean code that people can read, yet not placing much emphasis on the skill of reading the code.

The ability to read code must also be a skill, and as such it must be something that can be learnt and practiced. In this presentation, we're going to look at:

- The different reasons we might have to read code, and how that should impact our reading
- The problems we face when reading code (even our own!)
- Tips to bear in mind when we're reading code
- Tools we can use to help our understanding
- How and where to practice these skills

At the end of the talk we will at least have considered whether we need to level up our "Reading Code" skill.

Transcript

1. View Slide

2. Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler
   

   View Slide

3. View Slide

4. View Slide

5. View Slide

6. View Slide

7. READING CODE
   

   View Slide

8. View Slide

9. View Slide

10. View Slide

11. View Slide

12. View Slide

13. View Slide

14. https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
    “Every programmer occasionally, when
    nobody’s home, turns off the lights,
    pours a glass of scotch, puts on some
    light German electronica, and opens up
    a file on their computer. They read
    over the lines, and weep at their
    beauty….”
    

    View Slide

15. View Slide

16. View Slide

17. View Slide

18. View Slide

19. View Slide

20. View Slide

21. View Slide

22. https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
    “This file is Good Code. It has
    sensible and consistent names for
    functions and variables. It’s
    concise. It doesn’t do anything
    obviously stupid…. It reads like
    poetry written by someone over
    thirty.”
    

    View Slide

23. View Slide

24. View Slide

25. View Slide

26. View Slide

27. View Slide

28. View Slide

29. View Slide

30. View Slide

31. View Slide

32. View Slide

33. View Slide

34. View Slide

35. View Slide

36. View Slide

37. View Slide

38. View Slide

39. View Slide

40. View Slide

41. Badass: Making Users Awesome
    Kathy Sierra
    “After enough exposure with feedback, your
    brain began detecting patterns and underlying
    structures, without your conscious awareness.
    With more exposure, your brain finetuned its
    perception and eventually figured out what
    really mattered. Your brain was making finer
    distinctions and sorting signal from noise
    even if you couldn’t explain how.
    It was just your brain learning...
    without bothering you with all those pesky
    details”
    

    View Slide

42. •
    •
    •
    •
    

    View Slide

43. View Slide

44. •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    

    View Slide

45. View Slide

46. Twelfth Night
    William Shakespeare
    

    View Slide

47. •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    

    View Slide

48. View Slide

49. View Slide

50. Twelfth Night
    William Shakespeare
    If music be the food of love, play on,
    Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
    The appetite may sicken, and so die.
    

    View Slide

51. The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems
    Geoffrey Chaucer
    Whylom, as olde stories tellen us,
    Ther was a duk that highte Theseus;
    Of Athenes he was lord and governour,
    And in his tyme swich a conquerour,
    That gretter was ther noon under the
    sonne.
    

    View Slide

52. •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    

    View Slide

53. View Slide

54. View Slide

55. View Slide

56. View Slide

57. View Slide

58. IDE Navigation
    https://youtu.be/1UHsJyCq1SU
    

    View Slide

59. View Slide

60. Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter
    Steven Johnson
    “If you don't think about the
    underlying mechanics of the simulation—
    even if that thinking happens in a
    semiconscious way—you won't last very
    long in the game. You have to probe to
    progress.”
    

    View Slide

61. •
    •
    •
    •
    

    View Slide

62. View Slide

63. “The game scholar James Paul Gee breaks
    probing down into a four-part process,
    which he calls the ‘probe, hypothesize,
    reprobe, rethink’ cycle”
    Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter
    Steven Johnson
    

    View Slide

64. View Slide

65. View Slide

66. Good Omens
    Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
    “It may, or may not, have helped
    Anathema get a clear view of things if
    she’d been allowed to spot the very
    obvious reason why she couldn’t see
    Adam’s aura. It was for the same reason
    that people in Trafalgar Square can’t
    see England.”
    

    View Slide

67. •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    •
    

    View Slide

68. View Slide

69. View Slide

70. View Slide

71. View Slide

72. The Giant of Jum
    Elli Woollard & Benji Davies
    “I’m grizzly and grumpy
    and grouchy and grumbly
    I’ve not been called lovely before!”
    

    View Slide

73. View Slide

74. View Slide

75. View Slide

76. View Slide

77. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
    Robert C. Martin
    “Indeed, the ratio of time spent
    reading versus writing is well over 10
    to 1.”
    

    View Slide

78. “Indeed, the ratio of time spent
    reading versus writing is well over 10
    to 1. We are constantly reading old
    code as part of the effort to write new
    code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to
    read makes it easier to write.”
    Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
    Robert C. Martin
    

    View Slide

79. View Slide

80. View Slide

81. View Slide

82. Pride & Prejudice
    Jane Austen
    “My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not
    move over this instrument in the
    masterly manner which I see so many
    women’s do. They have not the same
    force or rapidity, and do not produce
    the same expression. But then I have
    always supposed it to be my own fault —
    because I will not take the trouble of
    practising. It is not that I do not
    believe my fingers as capable as any
    other woman's of superior execution.”
    

    View Slide

83. View Slide