“There is an important tradeoff between the computational power of a language and the ability to determine what a program in that language is doing.’ — W3C, Principle of Least Power”

There is an important association between complexity of functionality and readability that must considered by a programmer constantly. I seek to describe how the less complex or ‘powerful’ programming paradigms have improved both the design and the ability to read code over time.

Progression of Language Constructs Resulting in Improvements of Clarity

Spaghetti Code

In 1968, Edsger Dijkstra, acting as an advocate for easy to read, structured code, composed a letter in which he called for the complete abolition of…

Intro

Redundant data may not be an issue for non-relational databases.

For relational databases, this is a pest that must be disposed of.

Data redundancy increases the difficulty of inserting, updating or deleting rows from a database consistently. Database normalization is a technique to organize data into multiple tables to eliminate data redundancy.

Systems that require specific information retrieval from a database benefit from the precision normalization provides. However, systems performing mass amounts of information retrieval may experience a decrease in access speed. The lack of data duplicity in normalized databases results in slower read times from the required use of…

I start each day with a cup of coffee.

The process is the same — I choose a mug, fill my Keurig machine with water, place a k-cup inside, and I hit the start button. I hit the start button having complete trust that I’ll have a steaming cup of joe in a few minutes, because that’s just what a Keurig machine does.

The thing is, I have no idea how my Keurig machine makes my cup of coffee. I have my speculations, of course, from working previously in a coffee shop with much larger brewers. I can speculate that…