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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7619484" data-attributes="member: 4937">You are possibly right.&nbsp; Certainly, 10 software engineers with sufficient experience and knowledge would be able to agree as to when code was badly written.But one of the underlying assumptions of your statement is that they software engineers were reasonably familiar with the language paradigm of the code.&nbsp; I honestly don't have have a very good feel for what very elegant Lisp or Prolog code would look like, because while I've been exposed to toy solutions in those languages (and asked to write a few toy solutions), I've never seen anything resembling a real solution in those languages and the paradigm that they use is radically different.&nbsp;&nbsp; Likewise, on first appearance, assembly language looks like gobbly-gook to me, and I'd have no feel for how elegant it was nor am I certain that even good assembly language programmers would see the structure of the program quickly.The problem is that English or any other natural language as a communication paradigm more resembles Lisp or Assembly Language in terms of ability to grasp it's elegance than say C++ does a dozen programmers who all share 20 years experience with the language.&nbsp;&nbsp; Even though I use English all the time, as a means of expressing rules, the subtleties of the problem or the elegance of the solution are often much easier to miss than defects in a section of code.&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor is it obvious that any 10 people highly expressive in English will agree as to what constitutes good writing in English.It definitely has merit.&nbsp; We just don't understand the subject well enough to answer your question.&nbsp;&nbsp; In fact, my suspicion is that the answer is so complicated that a mere human mind will not be able to grasp it.&nbsp; We'll likely have to build a mind subtle and powerful enough to get the answer, and then build another one to try to explain it to us in language simple enough for us to grasp.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7619484, member: 4937"] You are possibly right. Certainly, 10 software engineers with sufficient experience and knowledge would be able to agree as to when code was badly written. But one of the underlying assumptions of your statement is that they software engineers were reasonably familiar with the language paradigm of the code. I honestly don't have have a very good feel for what very elegant Lisp or Prolog code would look like, because while I've been exposed to toy solutions in those languages (and asked to write a few toy solutions), I've never seen anything resembling a real solution in those languages and the paradigm that they use is radically different. Likewise, on first appearance, assembly language looks like gobbly-gook to me, and I'd have no feel for how elegant it was nor am I certain that even good assembly language programmers would see the structure of the program quickly. The problem is that English or any other natural language as a communication paradigm more resembles Lisp or Assembly Language in terms of ability to grasp it's elegance than say C++ does a dozen programmers who all share 20 years experience with the language. Even though I use English all the time, as a means of expressing rules, the subtleties of the problem or the elegance of the solution are often much easier to miss than defects in a section of code. Nor is it obvious that any 10 people highly expressive in English will agree as to what constitutes good writing in English. It definitely has merit. We just don't understand the subject well enough to answer your question. In fact, my suspicion is that the answer is so complicated that a mere human mind will not be able to grasp it. We'll likely have to build a mind subtle and powerful enough to get the answer, and then build another one to try to explain it to us in language simple enough for us to grasp. [/QUOTE]

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