Language “Succinctness is Power”
I’ve been keeping an eye out for good computer science articles. I found a reference to “Succinctness is Power” on stack overflow and decided to read it. I’m not an expert on programming languages, and I don’t suspect that I’ll ever become that. My interest and expertise is more in the design of a software program than the exact implementation parameters.
A point of interest for me, is that a good program design is rarely short and succinct. An object orientated design is generally longer than a non-OO Design. The purpose behind this is to support the inevitable change.
Methodologically aside, in order to achieve what I enjoy doing I must use a programming language. To learn various concepts, I’ve learned several programming languages. To my knowledge, I know more programming languages then most of my (real life) colleagues.
The article’s hypothesis is that Succinctness is power; the article defines a method to calculate the succinctness of a programming language, and then explores different aspects of the idea.
As previously mentioned, I’ve used quite a few programming languages. Most of them for pedagogical purposes. I’ve always seen different advantages and disadvantages in programming languages and of the languages I actually like, I’m not sure which one is more succinct.
I do prefer a language with an extensive set of libraries, but only because the allow me to get to business faster. I don’t think libraries are a consideration in the article, but it likely should be. C is great and it’s powerful, but you end up programming everything. Most of the time, I don’t see the purpose to this.
Anyway, please read the article… leave a note of what you think of it. I’m interested to know.
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