> Programs are not designed to be readable, they are designed to solve a problem
I assume you've not had much experience with any legacy code where: if statements span hundreds of lines, variables have cryptic names which mean nothing to anyone but the original author (who is gone), and a distinct lack of comments.
I'm in the middle of such a project, and the lack of readability is severely inhibiting my ability to move forward. In fact, I've had to write software to parse this source code, just to follow the flow of logic.
This might be an extreme example, but it highlights how important readability is.
I assume you've not had much experience with any legacy code where: if statements span hundreds of lines, variables have cryptic names which mean nothing to anyone but the original author (who is gone), and a distinct lack of comments.
I'm in the middle of such a project, and the lack of readability is severely inhibiting my ability to move forward. In fact, I've had to write software to parse this source code, just to follow the flow of logic.
This might be an extreme example, but it highlights how important readability is.