Have you ever seen some sheet music, a schematic, or an equation and thought it would be more clearly expressed as a paragraph of English text? Those are meant to be read by humans too.
You don't have to abstract everything, but I like to use a type to add meaning. `String` and `Pair` are especially vague. Was it `UserName` or `UserId`? Was this the status code, or the message we want to display to the user? These are questions that can be answered (and mistakes that can be prevented!) by the type system. You can't get that with just a comment.
> Have you ever seen some sheet music, a schematic, or an equation and thought it would be more clearly expressed as a paragraph of English text? Those are meant to be read by humans too.
Every subject that invented each of these formats would disagree with you except for maybe sheet music (but we still use natural language heavily in music education). Do we learn how to interpret schematics, equations, and so on simply by interacting with them directly? It's possible but rare. These formats are consumed by humans, but they are definitely not native to us. To some degree written text isn't either, but it's much closer to speaking than any of these formats is.
I can understand your second point, but also it can be done in better ways than the two examples we were forced to start with. I'm not saying we do/don't have to abstract everything. But if we just want "names" or to know which arguments are what in a one line piece of code a comment is perfectly fine. Obviously as complexity grows we want more of what you are saying, but so far all we were dealing with is essentially a list of three values. And for that I just think two extra classes is too much. Maybe I'm arbitrarily being a minimalist, it's subjective.
If I had it my way java lambdas would be better and all of this would look so much nicer :)
It doesn't have to be a full-blown class, I'm happy with
type UserName string
If I can't have that, I'll probably grumble and see how close Lombok can get me to that. It's gotta be close, right?
>These formats are consumed by humans, but they are definitely not native to us. To some degree written text isn't either, but it's much closer to speaking than any of these formats is.
Humans are wonderful things! We have so many means of expression outside of speaking. Have you ever heard those code audiobooks they tried to make for traveling engineers, or a python spelling bee? I'm sure there's something linguistic going on in written text that I don't fully understand.
You don't have to abstract everything, but I like to use a type to add meaning. `String` and `Pair` are especially vague. Was it `UserName` or `UserId`? Was this the status code, or the message we want to display to the user? These are questions that can be answered (and mistakes that can be prevented!) by the type system. You can't get that with just a comment.