[hinkley]

Paraphrasing an observation I stole many years ago:

A bunch of us thought learning to talk to computers would get them out of learning to talk to humans and so they spent 4 of the most important years of emotional growth engaging in that, only to graduate and discover they are even farther behind everyone else in that area.

[analog31]

This raises an interesting point. I've speculated that if someone has a hard time expressing themselves to other humans verbally or in writing, they're also going to have a hard time writing human-readable code. The two things are rooted in the same basic abilities. Writing documentation or comments in the code at least gives someone two slim chances at understanding them, instead of just one.

I have the opposite problem. Granted, I'm not a software developer, but only use code as a problem solving tool. But once again, adding comments to my code gives me two slim chances of understanding it later, instead of one.

[1718627440]

> I've speculated that if someone has a hard time expressing themselves to other humans verbally or in writing

I don't think they have actually problems with expressing themselves, code is also just a language with a very formal grammar and if you use that approach to structure your prose, it's also understandable. The struggle is more to mentally encode non-technical domain knowledge, like office politics or emotions.

[analog31]

That's true. But people have had formal language for millennia, so why don't we use it?

Here's my hunch. Formal specifiation is so inefficient that cynics suspect it of being a form of obstructionism, while pragmatic people realize that they can solve a problem themselves, quicker than they can specify their requirements.

[1718627440]

> But people have had formal language for millennia, so why don't we use it?

In case you don't refer to the mathematical notion of formal, then we use formal language all the time. Every subject has its formal terms, contracts are all written in a formal way, specifications use formal language. Anything that really matters or is read by a large audience is written in formal language.

[hinkley]

I think there’s some of that, but it’s also probably a thing where people who make good tutors/mentors tend to write clearer code as well, and the Venn diagram for that is a bit complicated.

Concise code is going to be difficult if you can’t distill a concept. And that’s more than just verbal intelligence. Though I’m not sure how you’d manage it with low verbal intelligence.