Re: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?

On 24 Dec 2019 08:35 -0800, from lm(a)mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy): Same reason why I'll sometimes add "unnecessary" parenthesis to expressions. If you parse the expression and know all precedence rules by heart (sometimes including the more esoteric ones; quick now, imagining you don't do a lot of bit-banging, does `^` have precedence over `&`? the existence of the joke "goes to" `-->` operator is just icing on the cake here), those can technically be unnecessary; but having them often adds _clarity_ that helps convey intent (yes, I really meant to do this) and meaning (this is how to parse the expression), at the cost of a totally insignificant increase in build times. To me, that's an appropriate trade-off.

That said, I'd rather read code that makes good use of language features such as, say, the conditional operator (`?:` in C-derived languages), than code that does the same thing using a bunch of if/else constructs and temporary variables, just because someone might not know what `x?y:z` in the middle of a statement means. That latter is something that can be solved by a five-minute explanation when they encounter it, instead of burdening everyone who reads the code with extra crud just in the event that someone doesn't know about the conditional operator. Now, that might not be (hopefully was not) what you meant, but to me, "write readable code" should not be taken to mean "write code that does not require knowledge of the programming language to read", as sometimes happens at the other extreme end of the scale.