On coming to depend on the readability of managed code
Matt has a great post over at http://blogs.msdn.com/mattwar/archive/2004/09/17/230941.aspx. I know exactly how he feels. It's been four years now since I wrote any volume of C++ code. I've always thought of C/C++ as my native language after coming up through the early years of C++ compilers, but I think that phase is passing.
After a year or so of server-side JScript (really), 2 years away from the coal-face serving time as a manager and now a year of C#, I look at unmanaged code (especially COM-heavy code) and I find I can barely pick out the functionality from the plumbing, overhead, variant conversions and other assorted chaff.
I'm also always amazed at how much difference in readability having a set of widely adopted coding guidelines has made.
I can read so much more of people's code by glancing at it simply by the fact that there's a good chance the variables are called ledgerAccountList these days rather than pLdgAccts.
I suppose that brings me round to noting that despite developer machismo, English is actually still my native language rather than C, C++ or C#.
