Re: OT: Auxlangs (was Re: "Esperanto V.2")

* Mark J. Reed said on 2006-03-26 22:20:21 +0200
> On 3/26/06, Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> > I wouldn't equate 'concise' with 'better', with programming
> > languages or natural ones.  Conciseness in a programming language
> > usually occurs at the expense of readability,
>
> So it's an unfair generalization to say that conciseness in a proglang
> occurs at the expense of readibility - even "usually".  Verbosity can
> actually get in the way of comprehension.  To the uninitiated, even a
> simple "Hello, world" program in Java is intimidating because of all
> the boilerplate required to get it to compile and run. [..]
>
> Whereas the corresponding program in Perl - the poster child for
> illegibility - is a single line that says 'print "Hello, world!\n";'.
> The only things you have to explain are the \n and maybe the
> semicolon.
Can't help myself - in Python that would be 'print "Hello, world!"', not
even needing to explain a semicolon or a line shift :)

Rexx interestingly uses "say" instead of "print", even more concise.


t.

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