The two kinds of readability

2025-03-16

This is an unpublished post. It's likely (more) full of spelling mistakes and errors. It may also end abruptly without a conclusion.

Which language is more readable?

As someone who works with a number of languages I often encounter statements that reduce down to the following:

Go is much more readable than python.

and its opposite:

Python is much more readable than go.

Somewhat confusingly I agree with both. I recently realised that how I reconcile this seeming contradiction is that the above statements are actually talking about different kinds of readability.

Contrived example

To illustrate what I mean I’ll start with some toy code in both languages.

In Python:

output_numbers = [doubled(n) for n in input_numbers]

In Go:

outputNumbers := make([]int, len(inputNumbers))
for i := range inputNumbers {
    outputNumbers[i] = inputNumbers[i] * 2
}

Another example

In Python:

data = {"Name": "Steve"}

response = requests.post(
    'https://postman-echo.com/post',
    data=json.dumps(data),
    headers={'Content-type': 'application/json'}
)

if response.status_code != 200:
    raise Exception(f"Request failed with status code {response.status_code}")

responseBody = json.loads(response.content)

print(responseBody)

In Go:

data := map[string]any{
    "Name": "Steve",
}

jsonBody, err := json.Marshal(data)
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("unable to marshal request data: %w", err)
}
bodyReader := bytes.NewReader(jsonBody)

resp, err := http.Post("https://postman-echo.com/post", "application/json", bodyReader)
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("error making request: %w", err)
}

defer resp.Body.Close()
if resp.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
    return fmt.Errorf("unexpected status code: %d", resp.StatusCode)
}

var responseBody map[string]any
err = json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&responseBody)
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("error decoding response body: %w", err)
}

fmt.Printf("Response: %+v\n", responseBody)