My first post to Sai

Succinctness is simply one goal of many. :)  The main reason that the
higher level languages are better than assembly language isn't their
succintness (although that is important), but because they present
programming a computer in a way a little easier for most human beings to
understand. Is COBOL succinct? Not really. Is it useful? Yes. Because it
presents programming the computer in a way non Computer Scientists could
understand. Also, succinctness is not power. If succinctness were power,
then everyone would be programming in very high level languages like C#
which are often more succinct than C. Yet C and C++ are still common.
Why is this? because C and C++ are more powerful and capable than C#.
What a language can is not completely determined by the succinctness
with which it can do it, and some things are almost impossible to do in
C# because it was designed for a different purpose.

Addition: A better example might be perl vs C. I can write perl programs
that do things much more succinctly than in C. Why then isn't perl more
power? And why do people still use C? Of course its because my succinct
perl programs are also a nightmare to read, and because there are some
things difficult to do in perl which are easier in C. So succinctness
definately isn't all.

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