Comment by meowface
5 days ago
I really don't think that's true at all. Anyone here can read and sign off on 1000 lines of code faster than they can write the same 1000 lines of code, pretty much no matter what the code is.
5 days ago
I really don't think that's true at all. Anyone here can read and sign off on 1000 lines of code faster than they can write the same 1000 lines of code, pretty much no matter what the code is.
It also depends heavily on the language.
I can review 100x more Go code in a set amount of time than I can, say React.
With Go there are repetitive structures (if err == nil) and not that many keywords, it's easy to sniff out the suspicious bits and focus on them.
With Javascript and all of the useWhatevers and cyclic dependencies and functions returning functions that call functions, it's a lot harder to figure out what the code does just by reading it.
I definitely get your point, but it's also pretty annoying to write weird indirect or meta-functional code, not just to read it. It's still almost always faster to read than to write.
I can think of edge cases where a certain section of code is easier and faster to write than to read, but in general - in our practical day-to-day experiences - reading a lot of code is faster than writing a lot of code. Not just faster but less mentally and physically taxing. Still mentally taxing, yes, but less.