Comment by matt_kantor
6 days ago
Ah, then it seems like you don't agree that reading code is harder than writing code (for you). Or maybe you're decoupling hardness from time (so it's five difficult minutes vs an easy hour).
6 days ago
Ah, then it seems like you don't agree that reading code is harder than writing code (for you). Or maybe you're decoupling hardness from time (so it's five difficult minutes vs an easy hour).
For the first 15 years of my career I found reading code much harder than writing code. Then I invested a lot of effort in improving my code reading and code reviewing skills, with the result that code reading no longer intimidates me like it used to.
That's why I think reading is harder than writing: it takes a whole lot more effort to learn code reading skills, in my experience.
Thanks, now I understand your perspective.
It seems like your answer to sarchertech's upthread "if you put in equal amounts of practice at reading and writing code you'll get faster at reading code than writing code" question might be "yes". Either that or you've intentionally invested more in your reading skills than your writing skills.
I'm not sure if "equal practice" is exactly right, but my opinion is that code reading and code review are skills that you can deliberately strengthen - and strengthening can help you get a lot more value out of both LLMs and collaborative development.
3 replies →