Orphaned Response

[lee at eel.UUCP]

	The degree of readability of "if ((foo=..." is a reasonable subject
	of debate, but I decline to back down on the general assertion that
	one mark of a professional is a genuine effort to *maximize*
	readability, not just to bring it above some minimum threshold.

As with any form of communication, there is no absolute scale on which
to evaluate a speech, lecture, article or program as to its "readability",
that is, the degree to which a person can absorb the information contained
within it.  People who teach writing and communication stress that the
item MUST be designed with the expected audience in mind.

An article written to explain FORTRAN to novice programmers will be
inefficient (i.e. not maximally readable) to an experienced programmer.
Likewise, programs "likely" to be read by expert programmers might well be
more readable when "if ((fp=fopen..." is used even if for other programmers
the opposite is true.