Re: Readability of Delphi

In article <44dbaf1c$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, jcooper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
says...
> Consistency and Clarity are wholly unrelated
qualities - Something may be entirely consistent and yet be unclear.

That doesn't make them **wholly** unrelated though.

Establishing that there _appears_ to be a relationship doesn't establish
that there _is_ a relationship.

See other post vis price of gold and the weather in Poughkeepsie.


If A can be shown not to be related to B in the general case, but can be
shown to be related in a specific case then there is some other
connecting quality in the specific case that has not been described.

i.e. A is not related to B, but rather A is related to C and C is also
related to B. But this does not mean that A is related to B through C.

(I can never remember whether the term for this is non-associative or
non-commutative. non-Associative, I _think_)


In this case we might say that:

Consistency is not related to Clarity.

Consistency and Clarity are both _independently_ related to Uniformity.



Consistency can certainly help clarity. I used to work with someone who indented
code more or less at random. I can assure you consistent indenting is clearer :-)

Consistently random is still consistent.

;)

Uniform indenting is clearer.

But was it random, or merely a consistent indentation scheme that
_appeared_ random?

;)


Consistent naming schemes also aid understanding (ie clarity), to provide
another example.

Again, this seems to be equating clarity with lack of ambiguity, which
is certainly one interpretation of the term, but is not how I mean it.

- something can be perfectly clear and yet be ambiguous, and vice versa.


--
Jolyon Smith
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Readability of Delphi
    ... I have a unit containing 10 procedures all using a consistent ... indentation style and an indent of 2 spaces. ... Has the clarity of the 8 unchanged procedures been affected? ... Has the clarity of the 2 changed procedures been affected? ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: OT: The REAL RIddle of DO LOOPS Solved
    ... to be consistent with the "+1" convention, ... surely the 'logical' and 'consistent' thing for a programming language ... When encountering ambiguity, ... have worked if that's an allowable explicit statement for STEP. ...
    (sci.stat.math)
  • Re: OT: The REAL RIddle of DO LOOPS Solved
    ... to be consistent with the "+1" convention, in context. ... surely the 'logical' and 'consistent' thing for a programming language ... When encountering ambiguity, ...
    (sci.stat.math)
  • Re: OT: The REAL RIddle of DO LOOPS Solved
    ... to be consistent with the "+1" convention, in context. ... surely the 'logical' and 'consistent' thing for a programming language ... When encountering ambiguity, ...
    (sci.stat.math)