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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Read Code?
New submitter Gornkleschnitzer writes: The majority of humans read silently by rendering a simulation of the printed words as if they were being spoken. By reading that sentence, chances are you're now stuck being conscious of this, too. You're welcome.
As a programmer (and a reader of fanfiction), plenty of things I read are not valid English syntax. When I find myself reviewing class definitions, for loops, and #define macros, I rely on some interesting if inconsistent mental pronunciation rules. For instance, int i = 0; comes out as "int i equals zero," but if(i == 0) sometimes comes out as either "if i is zero" or "if i equals equals zero." The loop for(size_t i = 0; i < itemList.size(); ++i) generally translates to "for size T i equals zero, i less than item list dot size, plus-plus i." I seem to drop C++ insertion/extraction operators entirely in favor of a brief comma-like pause, with cout << str << endl; sounding like "kowt, stur, endel."
What are your code-reading quirks?
As a programmer (and a reader of fanfiction), plenty of things I read are not valid English syntax. When I find myself reviewing class definitions, for loops, and #define macros, I rely on some interesting if inconsistent mental pronunciation rules. For instance, int i = 0; comes out as "int i equals zero," but if(i == 0) sometimes comes out as either "if i is zero" or "if i equals equals zero." The loop for(size_t i = 0; i < itemList.size(); ++i) generally translates to "for size T i equals zero, i less than item list dot size, plus-plus i." I seem to drop C++ insertion/extraction operators entirely in favor of a brief comma-like pause, with cout << str << endl; sounding like "kowt, stur, endel."
What are your code-reading quirks?
Actually, only people who read poorly do that. People who read well decode printed words directly into mental concepts, rather than sounding them all out, only sounding out a word when it is unfamiliar in print. (see jokes about people whose lips move when they read)
Exactly. Imagine trying to make sense of a web page by sub-vocalizing the HTML as it is printed out.
Turns out that (unless you learn two or more languages as a child) the neural structures that make kids little language acquisition machines literally die off, in several stages (at the ends of age ranges called "critical periods") as the neurons that weren't used by the language learned are "pruned". Once this has happened, learning a new language isn't impossible. But it's more like recovering from a stroke.
This is total bullshit.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/v...
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
It's "c out" for those who understand what the statement does and "kowt" for those who don't bother to think about what it means.