MBmbivert·Aug 22, 2023
I think that some codebases can lend themselves to be read more than others. Consider for example GNU cat[0] vs. Plan9's[1], from which one can infer the overall readability of the two projects.
In particular, codebases who are composed of small, well-isolated components, can be read one chunk at a time, like a book. But I wouldn't be surprised for most "professional grade" codebases to consist of organic, "cluttered" aggregate. Which, as you observe, aren't really suited to be read, even more so linearly.
It also depends on one's intents, which are likely narrower in a professional setting (e.g. fixing a bug, implementing a feature; refactoring being a notable exception), than in a learning setting (e.g. learning how to write idiomatic parsers in Go by studying the Go parser itself). In this last case, curiosity might push you to read th
Read the rest
e code more deeply, compare different codebases, etc.
Finally, some languages also are more prone to enforce locality than others, impacting readability. See for example Linus arguing about C being more context-free than C++ [2].
[0]: https://github.com/pete/cats/blob/master/gnu-cat.c
[1]: https://github.com/pete/cats/blob/master/plan9-cat.c
[2]: https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=104196&curpost...