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

Mark J. Reed wrote:

>On 3/27/06, taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...> wrote:
>
>
>>>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 :)
>>
>>
>
>Yes,yes, but Python is claimed by its supporters to be highly legible.
>I deliberately chose Perl because of its reputation for illegibility.
>(Perl6, btw, will also have "say", which will automatically append the
>newline, as well as "print", which will continue not to.)
>
>
You're right, I suppose.  I guess I meant ultra-conciseness, APL-style.
And, yes, for simple things like 'Hello, world', it's more readable, but
for more complicated things, while it is perhaps easier/quicker to
write, it is significantly harder to read. I didn't mean 'Conciseness is
always bad', but that 'making things too concise leads to issues with
legibility, or, with human languages, increases the potential for
mishearing'.

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