Quality: Readable

(easily understandable by someone untrained in the language)

The most immediate and obvious principle of Intuitive Programming is Readability.

Readability has many benefits. A readable language allows people unfamiliar with a script to understand what it does. A readable language is easier to learn by example, from reading other scripts.

Readability also helps the author of a script to see that they have expressed their intent, and to understand their own script when returning after a length of time to make changes. A readable, understandable script is much easier to maintain.

To be readable a language should have a structure that is similar to natural language. It should use terms and symbols that are familiar and have their common meaning.

Examples:
put character 4 of "elephant" —> "p"

put the last two words of "Slow down you move too fast" —> "too fast"

if itemName ends with "s" then set maybePlural to true

put 200 ft + 7% —> 214 feet

put the number of occurrences of <digit> in "A6 B42" --> 3
put the number of occurrences of <letter,digit> in "A6 B42" --> 2

put every occurrence of <digit> in "A6 B42" --> [6,4,2]
put every occurrence of <letter,digit> in "A6 B42" --> ["A6","B4"]