Re:We need less powerful languages (2015)
by danuker on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @07:24PM
(#34620248)
I agree that C lets you more precisely control what a CPU does. By that definition of "powerful", I think the assembly language of that processor is the most powerful language.
But the cost with which you must put up is also large (the intricacies of the CPU, memory allocation, types and such breed complexity). Some tasks are not worth that cost.
For instance, you want to print "hi" to the console. A shell script saying "echo hi" is perfectly adequate. No need to declare a main function or import anything.
By defining "power" as this "efficiency" or "sparseness" or "brevity" measure, strictly looking at this example, C is less powerful than bash.
I tried to take literal code length per Rosetta code task as a very rough measure of "terseness" (the x-axis), and I'm curious what you think.
But the cost with which you must put up is also large (the intricacies of the CPU, memory allocation, types and such breed complexity). Some tasks are not worth that cost.
For instance, you want to print "hi" to the console. A shell script saying "echo hi" is perfectly adequate. No need to declare a main function or import anything.
By defining "power" as this "efficiency" or "sparseness" or "brevity" measure, strictly looking at this example, C is less powerful than bash.
I tried to take literal code length per Rosetta code task as a very rough measure of "terseness" (the x-axis), and I'm curious what you think.
https://danuker.go.ro/programming-languages.html
In any case, my definition of "power" is close to the opposite of what it means in the OP article.