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It's not as much as the language makes it "hard" as much as it is that it makes it tedious. The language can get in your way as far as wanting to express your
by felideon 16y ago
It's not as much as the language makes it "hard" as much as it is that it makes it tedious. The language can get in your way as far as wanting to express your thoughts or algorithm.
It's the same in natural languages. In English we have the word love, in Greek you have: agápe, éros, philía, and storgē. One could thus argue that Greek is more expressive than English, as Lisp is more expressive than Java, for example.
- nadam 16y agoYes, Lisp is a more expressive language than Java. But when I have to find out a nontrivial algorithm it does not help if I use a very expressive language. For example let's have this old interview question: find a loop in a linked list with O(1) memory. Here the used language does not matter. I feel the same with almost all algorithms. I know that using a less expressive language can get in your way. I programmed a lot in ASM, and later in C. They got in my way sometimes. Java is a far more expressive language than Asm and C. So it is already luxury for me in a sense (although really not as expressive as Lisp)
- numeromancer 16y ago"For example let's have this old interview question: find a loop in a linked list with O(1) memory. Here the used language does not matter. I feel the same with almost all algorithms." Sure, it doesn't matter, as long as you don't actually write the code. When you write the code, the language then matters a great deal. I conjecture that the signal/noise ratio for such an algorithm would be much lower in Java than in Lisp.