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"1 line of LISP replaces 20 lines of C" Might be true. But in my experience that single line takes as much time to think up as the 20 lines in C. So it doesn't
by jvdh 17y ago
"1 line of LISP replaces 20 lines of C"
Might be true. But in my experience that single line takes as much time to think up as the 20 lines in C. So it doesn't really work as an argument for either.
- winter_blue 17y agoGood point.
- jonsen 17y agoIt's impossible for 1 line to contain as many bugs as 20 lines may. Should make debugging time shorter, shouldn't it?
- mahmud 17y agoAbstraction and a good evaluation model go a long way towards helping you in thinking quickly. A subset of Common Lisp is to C what jQuery is to vanilla javascript; You can easily see a line of jQuery replacing 20 lines of cruft, and it doesn't take that long to think it up.
- Zak 17y agoThat may be, but if you're using good abstractions, it's easy to think of that single line in terms of arguments, side effects and return value. It becomes a good deal simpler to understand later when you're revisiting your code after six months.
- lallysingh 17y ago80% of that line's lifetime is in maintanence mode. Which option -- maintaining 20 lines of C or 1 line of lisp -- would you prefer to maintain?
- mcav 17y agoThat depends on whether or not you're able to comprehend the line of lisp as quickly as the 20 lines of C. Conciseness doesn't equal clarity.
- jpr 17y agoWrong on both accounts.
- jvdh 17y agowould you care to elaborate on that? Needless to say I disagree with you, but I can hardly say why if I don't know about your arguments.