If you understand very clearly what to do and how to do it, then you can write very clear code.

This is one of my outer-metrics. If a programmer cannot explain clearly what they are trying to done, then they will probably do it badly. If you are reading code and cannot tell with certainty what the code is doing, then it was not clear to the writer, and the code is likely to contain errors.

In theory human-readability and correct execution could be independent. In practice there is a very strong correlation.

Someone might argue, though, that there is a difference between thinking like a machine and being very knowledgeable about how a machine behaves.

(Someone might also point out that machines don’t think.)

From the computer’s perspective, is human-understandable code better? (That’s an honest question: I would guess not, but I’m not up on the research in this area, if in fact there is any.)

You can of course communicate things other people through programming, but only if they are thinking like machines, with all the associated limitations.

I think that Computer Scientists are trained to think like machines.

I think that the best developers out there think like machines. At least some of the time. (This may explain why some of them have difficulty getting dates, but that’s for another blog post.)

So when I see a statement like “but programming is ultimately a communication form” I focus on that aspect that is specific to programming, which is the creation of instructions for a machine.

You can of course communicate things other people through programming, but only if they are thinking like machines, with all the associated limitations.

(1) I don’t require students to *only* produce code. Just like mathematics, code is not “self-sufficient”. (Though, sometimes it is.)

(2) People on http://stackoverflow.com/ seem to do fine communicating with each other with a mix of English and code.

In Physics (my original school-major) there were some (Virginia Trimble, for one) that drew a sharp line between empirical and theoretic practitioners. (I have always thought that theory without empirical grounding was meaningless.)

Clearly I have no sympathy for those who lack an empirical grounding. Got one fired, as useless.

I was a CS student from UBC. I have to say that lately I’ve developed a bit of “hate” with CS students. I felt that they’re too cocky; they think that they’re the smartest bunch of people in this programming world. Yet most of CS students I met couldn’t really make a good decision on how to write code. Basically their Software Development/Engineering skill is almost close to zero. They don’t know how to write maintainable code but they boasted their code is the fastest by doing hacks/shortcuts/nifty-tricks.

Maybe this is the side effect from learning about “Algorithms and Data Structure” and reading those wonderful hacks programmers did in the past? Such that they put high value on performance instead of correctness, robustness, and etc.

On the other hand, most of Computer Engineering students I met are wiser so to speak.