code is for people to understand and only incidentally for machines to execute
This was a clever quote that has been taken way too far and simply isn't true. Even Hal Abelson backed off of that quote in SICP when pressed about it: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/. Code just is not primarily for people to read – it is primarily to make computers do things. Just think for a second about what you're saying:
The reason we use code is to allow people to discover, understand and build on ideas.
Really? The reason most people write code is to express an idea with that code? I don't think so. People code to make computers do things. The things the computers do may facilitate communicating ideas (e.g. wikipedia), but the code itself is not primarily about ideas. Honestly, the only exception I can think of is when I'm writing example code to convey ideas about programming.
Comments
This was a clever quote that has been taken way too far and simply isn't true. Even Hal Abelson backed off of that quote in SICP when pressed about it: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/. Code just is not primarily for people to read – it is primarily to make computers do things. Just think for a second about what you're saying:
Really? The reason most people write code is to express an idea with that code? I don't think so. People code to make computers do things. The things the computers do may facilitate communicating ideas (e.g. wikipedia), but the code itself is not primarily about ideas. Honestly, the only exception I can think of is when I'm writing example code to convey ideas about programming.