Signal-less Programming - [Are We There Yet?]

[alexandrkozyrev]

Sometimes I like to drive.

I drive like a grandpa. I turn-on a turn-signal almost too early. I want to increase my chances to survive.
Other drivers have plenty of time to recognize my intent (yeah, I know, they don’t care).

On other hand there are a lot of drivers who just change lanes. No turn-signal. Just free flow.

I sense we almost always omit intent-signal in our current state [of software development].
So other humans (incl. ourselves two days later) have to guess somehow.

[Webdev_Tory]

What’s an example of the intent-signalling you mean? Static typing? Variable/function-naming? Namespace descriptors?

[vvvvalvalval]

@alexandrkozyrev

I sense we almost always omit intent-signal in our current state [of software development].

It seems to me that many software best practices are about signaling intent, e.g good naming, declarative programming, code clarity, property-based testing, etc. Of course, whether we do a good job at that is debatable.