Ernest Code
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A meditation on simplicity in code by looking at a spat between Earnest Hemingway and William Faulkner 70 years ago.
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Ernest Code
- 1. Two Writers
- 2. “Ernest Hemingway: he has no courage, has never crawled out on a limb. He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary to see if it is properly used.”
- 3. “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
- 4. “Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute.”
- 6. Simplicity is measured not by how few lines of code you write, but how few ideas you need to convey.
- 8. EARNEST CODE
- 9. “The test of a book is how much good stuff you can throw away. When I’m writing it, I’m just as proud as a goddam lion. I use the oldest words in the English language. People think I’m an ignorant bastard who doesn’t know the ten-dollar words. I know the ten-dollar words. There are older and better words which if you arrange then in the proper combination you make it stick.”
Notes de l'éditeur
- I want to tell you about a spat between two writers that happened about 70 years ago, something that I find very relevant to what we do today.
- It started in 1947. In an interview, Faulkner chided Hemingway for his use of simple language.
- 1950. Hemingway, in turn, sneered at Faulkner for his reliance on complex language to convey complex ideas. $10 was about ~$493 adjusted for inflation. Why is this relevant?
- Donald Knuth. You will spend longer reading code than writing it, so when you write it you should pay attention to how it’s going to be read.
- What are ten-dollar words? Ten-dollar words might enlighten you, they may even delight you, but if they send the reader to the dictionary, they impose a cost. Hemingway thought it wasn’t worthwhile. A sentence, paragraph, or chapter is not the sum of its words, but about the ideas it conveys.
- I’m not sure what to call this principle. “Hack like Hemingway” sounds a little corny.
- Maybe this. Think of the cost of your words. Think about what features of your language are ten dollar words. Don’t use a complicated expression where a simple one will do. Don’t use a complicated abstraction where a simple one will do. Strive to use simple concepts to build complex systems.
- I’ll leave you with a final quote from Hemingway, a few years later.