Re:10% as verbose as Perl, 3X faster: K is the best language...
by nostrademons on Friday May 04, 2007 @05:50PM
(#19557)
Why would I want to be better at Arc than Lispniks? I'm a Haskeller. We're better than them anyways. ;-)
Seriously, this is one case where I think PG is wrong. Typing isn't the main productivity burden on programmers, thinking is. Any time you make someone decipher an identifier, you're slowing them down. Unpronounceable functions are particularly bad: I dunno about others, but I always think "F-N" when I see "fn", while I think "def" when I see "def".
I think Python and Scheme have it basically right, Haskell is okay but has an unfortunate tendency towards obscure vocabulary and cryptic conventions (nub? foldl? mapM_?), and Common Lisp and Java are way too verbose.
Seriously, this is one case where I think PG is wrong. Typing isn't the main productivity burden on programmers, thinking is. Any time you make someone decipher an identifier, you're slowing them down. Unpronounceable functions are particularly bad: I dunno about others, but I always think "F-N" when I see "fn", while I think "def" when I see "def".
I think Python and Scheme have it basically right, Haskell is okay but has an unfortunate tendency towards obscure vocabulary and cryptic conventions (nub? foldl? mapM_?), and Common Lisp and Java are way too verbose.