a day ago
- Succinctness equals power in programming languages; the main purpose of high-level languages is to make source code smaller.
- A better measure of code size is the number of elements (distinct nodes in syntax tree), not lines of code or characters.
- Brooks' observation: programmers produce similar lines of code per day regardless of language, so more succinct languages enable faster development.
- More powerful languages tend to have fewer bugs, which is critical in applications like network switches.
- The true test of a language is its ability to discover and solve new problems, not just predefined tasks.
- Restrictiveness in programming languages is mostly due to lack of succinctness, and readability improves with overall program conciseness.