|
There are examples of code which is unnecessarily complex, or difficult to read, but this is not a very good example. I'll join the chorus of those who say they don't even know Ruby and yet they could easily figure out what the example was doing. The most you could could say about this example, IMHO, is that it could be made more readable by breaking it up into more than one line. The last thing we need is more people writing C code in dynamic languages that have much better and more concise programming constructs. If a programmer does not wish to learn how to use these constructs, that's their business. But I intend to use all the power available to me in whatever language I am programming in -- when it is appropriate, of course. Just because some programmers don't understand how a particular language construct works, that does not make its use the product of a self-absorbed hacker who thinks he has "superpowers". Yes, we should all guard against writing code that is difficult to read, but I think such code is rarely caused by the language features we use (although some languages make that easier than others -- I'm looking at you, C++). In fact, you could argue that it is more commonly caused by the features we don't use. Unnecessary verbosity is often the product of someone who is new to a particular programming language, and I think most of us are happy to discover shorter, simpler, clearer ways of expressing things. In fairness to the author of the article, I think there is a point when you can chain a few too many things together without any intertwined temporary variables, separate function calls, or at least comments, and the reader of your code can get lost. However, in my mind, the code example given hasn't quite reached that threshold yet. |