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Oi, meddling with such definitions indeed puts us dangerously close to philosophy. As PG says in one of his essays, "the concepts we use in everyday life are fu
by andreyf 19y ago
Oi, meddling with such definitions indeed puts us dangerously close to philosophy. As PG says in one of his essays, "the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard". You're pushing too hard. It's a rule of thumb, not logical truth.
If you insist on a logical truth, however, I think it's best to say that everything else being equal, a more succinct language is more powerful than a less succinct one.
- henning 19y agoYes, don't challenge anything Paul Graham says, even if you have some way to back it up.
- yters 19y agoRight, that's the short road to negative karma, otherwise known as hell. Unfortunately, this post may qualify, since pg isn't a fan of saying things need to be kept under wraps. However, this is really a clever piece of reverse psychology, when you take into account the non conformist and devil may care attitude of us hackers.
- dfranke 19y agoI think if you tack on that qualification, then the statement becomes vacuous or at least near-so. Considerations in language design are dreadfully non-orthogonal to each other. I don't think you could measurably alter a language's succinctness without completely blowing away ceteris paribus.
- yters 19y agoBorder cases are where the interesting things lie.