Posted by Chung Leong on 04/09/06 21:16

Tim Martin wrote:
> I have a fair amount of scepticism for this way of thinking myself. But
> at the same time, I think anyone who's developed software in a team
> environment will understand that at least one requirement of good code
> is that it be readable by other people. Constraining programming style
> (whether it be with language features, formal coding standards or
> informal unspoken agreement) is to some extent a necessary part of that.

I agree with that up to a point. Readability obviously aids
development. On the other hand it has come to be that some people see
it as an end in itself. With aesthetic factor as the chief motive, they
busy themselves hiding "messy" parts of their code behind layers of
abstractions. This actually ends up decreasing readability since you
can't read what you can't see.

Looking at the issue empirically, I don't see macros as troublesome.
The source codes of such major projects as Linux, Apache, and PHP
itself are littered through out with macros. Since programmer usually
use them for oft-repeated code segments, you get accustomed to the
macros after a while, even though they look highly opaque at a glance.
In my opinion C++ templates are far less readable.

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