Fawny writes about design, typography, accessibility and Apple, Google and Microsoft products, plus occasional personal posts on being a gay geek.
HN links it for opinionated design essays and a personal post about gay role models in tech; one commenter dislikes narrow page layouts with large blank margins.
I disagree with OP on his bullet points of what doesn't matter (and I don't think it follows from the anecdote):
> That indentation is more than an incidental detail.
> That good programming is about following a set of rules.
> That aesthetics matter in code beyond the behavior being implemented.
I'm going to leave indentation aside for the moment, and talk about line length. People do serious research into how line length in text layout affects various aspects of reading: ease of comprehension, perceived ease of reading (not the same thing, apparently[0]).
Breaking up long lines has no effect on program behaviour, but it does have an effect on comprehension. And programming is by and large a team sport, in which any given piece of code is read many more times than it is written.
We think of, say, four-spaces-versus-two-spaces as a matter of preference and a source of silly holy wars. It needn't be only those things, however: on this, I have no convenient research link, but research could be done, and I have never noticed anyone using one-space indentation, suggesting that it isn't a purely arbitrary choice.
So OP's story of his student seems to directly undermine his conclusions: yes, aesthetics DO matter "beyond the behaviour being implemented", and whitespace is more than an incidental detail if you want code to be easier to debug and change. Following rules is hardly the worst way to get a sensible default for code readability - it is rare that there is a set of…
This article is pretty relevant, whatever side you are on, it's worth a read.
My fundamentalism is better than your fundamentalism
http://blog.fawny.org/2010/07/28/stubbornella/
Bear in mind that the author is not a computer scientist, and views narrow-minded geekery with some distaste. But he raises quite a few interesting points. I quote:
>“Underrepresentation” is an insulting concept. Who exactly gets to decide how many women should hold down jobs in a certain field? Who then gets to decide when too few women hold down those jobs? In short, who says women are underrepresented in technology? Who sets the quota?
I don’t exactly hear complaints that men are underrepresented in kindergarten teaching and nursing. (Actually, there are men in nursing, but many of them are gay. So are lots of male teachers. Perhaps that explains why this is a topic women’s advocates do not want to discuss.)
>“Merit” is a misnomer. Hence “women[’s] being unable to compete on merit” means nothing. But the airy dismissal of merit as a real issue incurs collateral damage. There isn’t any dispute that typical female brains differ from typical male brains, though the extent of the differences is disputed. Susan Pinker, in The Sexual Paradox, characterizes the differences as significant, while Lise Eliot, in Pink Brain, Blue Brain, argues that within-sex differences dwarf between-sex differences.
This is such a great thread, I'm excited to begin reading quite a few of the linked blogs (such as this one: https://acoup.blog/).
These ones are some of my favorites:
- www.wall.org/~aron/blog/ (physics, theology, history, philosophy)
- http://xahlee.info/ (math, emacs, keyboards, etc.)
- https://matt.might.net/articles/ (academy, compsci, etc.)
- https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ (programming, companies, etc.)
- https://danluu.com/ (technical topics)
- Mailing list in https://practicaltypography.com/
- http://paulgraham.com/
- https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ (math, physics)
- https://www.gwern.net/index (interesting articles)
- https://slatestarcodex.com/ and https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ (science, psychiatry, philosophy, rationality, etc.)
- http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ (programming)
- https://creativegood.com/blog/ (UX, and more)
- https://daringfireball.net/ (Apple)
- https://backreaction.blogspot.com/ (physics)
- https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/
- https://historyforatheists.com/ (historical myths)
- http://funcall.blogspot.com/ (programming, compsci)
- https://blog.fawny.org/ (accessibility, design)
- https://blog.jessfraz.com/ (technology)
- https://use-the-index-luke.com/blog (databases)
- https://weekendfisher.blogspot.com/ (God, love)
I can list some of my favorite articles from one of these blogs if anyone is interested.
He did just fine:
http://blog.fawny.org/2015/07/04/stevedorner/
"Qualcomm
Contrary to rumour, Qualcomm, which had bought Eudora early on from the University of Illinois, had always treated him well, he says. (“I am very happy to correct that impression. I was not shafted by Qualcomm. Qualcomm did very well by me.” And actually, Steve worked for that company for over 20 years.) He doesn’t have to work anymore – “and that is a blessing – it’s a blessing, it really is. It’s nice not to have that pressure. On the other hand, I’ve been retired now for little more than a year, and I do look around and question why I’m not being productive.”"
well, this seems to be a fairly balanced summary of the research (available if you explore the link you mention):
http://blog.fawny.org/2005/09/21/measures/
In essence, most studies indicate longer line length leads to faster reading. But also, people on average seem to prefer having a moderate line length over a longer one.
In my view the latter measure is more important. I'd rather have a layout which is more pleasing than one which is faster to read.
(Of course ideally you have a variable-width layout so the reader can choose himself)
He tells people what to build. He's very good at it, but he doesn't build things himself. Vision is cheap; negative taste [1][2] is easy; it's the implementation that counts.
I have no problem valuing the industrial engineers who figured out how to make the iPad 13 mm thick more than Jobs who decided it would be 13 mm thick.
[1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/2taste
[2] http://blog.fawny.org/2010/04/12/appletype/