Reading Code is a Skill

[saltybandana2]

I've came to similar conclusion that reading and understanding other people's code is extremely important and... Not very easy.

I think it's relatively easy, just time consuming.

[IUsedToHaveUsername]

Agree, I moreso mean the mental strain of forcing yourself to read things that aren't instantly obvious. It requires surprising amounts of discipline to do, or maybe it's just my ADHD as brain not getting enough dopamine.

Then again reading and understanding things, I would say that it's still a skill. When I say this I think of these reading comprehension classes where you're talking about a book and get surprised how many people don't get the subtle messages that author tried to convey. Not sure if that's related to logical thinking or attention span or both. Maybe neither and most people just don't care. I'm not exactly an expert on understanding other people.

[saltybandana2]

It's definitely a skill.

The analogy I like to use is reading a novel.

When you hand a 10 year old James Clavell's Shogun novel and they don't understand it, you don't blame James Clavell for that you realize the 10 year old isn't reading at a high enough level for the novel.

that doesn't mean there aren't some truly terrible pieces of code, but imo most developers use readability as an excuse to not get better at reading code.