Define readability.

The whole point of this video presentation was to show people how to navigate the source code, and then to decide whether they still felt the design was needlessly obtuse.

APL programs benefit from efforts to simplify just as much as any other language does. However, the current version of the compiler is more readable precisely for its concision. APL is concise, but concision itself isn't everything. Notepad readability covers more than concision.

I also disagree that shrinking code leads to less readable code. Shrinking code is usually a consequence of the application of "tricks" or micro-level obfuscatory design decisions. In cases where the objective is to shrink code at a micro-level without forcing simplification of the macro-level and underlying structure of the codebase as a whole, then it tends to mess with the semantic density and uniformity of the code, leading to harder readability. However, I'm arguing against that.

Did you listen to the above presentation and watch my demonstration of the architecture of the compiler? Do you find the architecture hard to understand? Do you find the naming conventions to be arbitrary? Do you find the structure obtuse? The presentation came about specifically to address this very claim.

If you've watched the presentation and feel that the architecture of the compiler and the design of the compiler is hard to follow, and you feel that you would not be able to begin learning the details of the code, where is it hard to understand? I welcome a counter example of any other compiler on the planet that has a simpler architecture that is easier to describe.

People make the claim that APL is "hard to grok" and they think that it's hard to grok because it's concise. I don't think I've ever met someone who understand the syntax and can read APL who believes that the code is hard to grok because of concision.

The problem here is that there is a point at which you cannot reasonably shrink your code any further. For most mainstream programming languages, Notepad readability is meaningless because they couldn't make their source code notepad readable if they tried. See my other comments on the previous threads for my thoughts and definition of readability.

Readability to those who don't "read the language" is, IMO, a bad metric. Readability should be judged by the degree to which programmers working with the source can comprehend and understand the entire system as a whole, and thereby have the best confidence of making large, wide, sweeping changes. I asserts that among the trade-off between local readability of a single function and macro readability of the whole system, the trade-off should always be made towards readability of the whole system.

The goal is to be able to work with the code, make changes to the code, and continue to keep the code moving. This means that I should be minimizing technical debt and minimizing the difficulty of making changes.

Put another way, given that my entire core compiler fits on a single computer screen of two columns of large print text in two notepad files, I would assert that it is more readable than most other compilers out there. The entire macro architecture is immediately apparent, without any necessary for additional documentation or diagrams. You don't have to ask yourself or use search to talk about where a given design pattern is used, because they are all literally there on your screen at one time.

Some people would say that this is not scalable, except that I have scaled this to a non-trivial compiler, which is designed to self-host on the GPU. Most people would have said this was beyond the capabilities of most current programming techniques and languages.

I would rather be able to see the entire piece of code than have to guess at things or have a source code that may hold my hand through more of the details, but for which I cannot keep the whole thing in my head at once.

If your definition of readability is that it is accessible to the uninitiated who know neither the language nor have experience with the domain or the programming techniques involved, I agree, a more verbose style is appropriate. That's what I'm writing a dissertation for, and guides, and videos. But people who are interested in working with a piece of code require a different readability, one that conflicts with the verbosity required too explain everything to the uninitiated.

This video presentation serves as a simple introduction to the entire working mechanisms of the compiler. It is more or less complete. The only thing it lacks is detailed expositions of each compiler pass and runtime function, which have nothing to do with understanding the architecture of the compiler or reading the code. The linked video presentation should give you everything you would need to work with this code on a daily basis and everything you need to begin studying each individual compiler pass. If it does not, or if you think it is unclear in some way, I would like to improve the code, and would appreciate some specific suggestions of where it fails to be clear.