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Instead of using a vague term like "power", perhaps the LISP fans should promote the concept "leverage", whereby you can talk about getting a task done with the
by magicmouse 8y ago
Instead of using a vague term like "power", perhaps the LISP fans should promote the concept "leverage", whereby you can talk about getting a task done with the fewest words of code. Small LISP programs can be incredibly clever, and transformation languages like LISP and FORTH are well known to win every program-shortness contest. However Assembler has always been more powerful in the sense that you can do things in Assembler that you can't do in higher level languages, because there is no direct mapping from a higher level language to many of the special instructions that exist on modern chips. So using "power" is a lamentable word choice. LISP does have problems though, many consider it a "write-only" language which transfers very poorly to other programmers. You can measure transferability of a codebase by assigning a new person to it, giving them a task, and seeing how long it takes, and how much is broken in the process. LISP is avoided by most large companies for this reason alone. Leverage and other factors are heavily outweighed in overall cost to the organization by the difficulty of transferring a code base among people.
- nradov 8y agoI thought APL (and its successor J) was the "winner" for doing the most with the fewest words of code. (~R∊R∘.×R)/R←1↓ιR
- Volt 8y agoYes, there are degrees. But everybody wants their language to be a winner, I guess.
- warbaker 8y agoI like "power." It's evocative, and it maps to the feeling you get with a good language - when your intent is made manifest with little effort, you feel powerful (and _are_ powerful).
- paulddraper 8y agoIs Assembly powerful?
- honestoHeminway 8y agoAh, that sweet feeling of superiority that flows through one, creating code, that no mortal after me shall comprehend.
- pjc50 8y agoI think these are fairly good reasons why the term should not be used. Appeal to the developer's power fantasy?
- kkarakk 8y agowhat a buzzfeed worthy comment
- jtms 8y agothen should we aspire to... weakness, fragility, and impotence?
- fwip 8y agoHow about things like readability and ease of maintenance and modification? To those people making real products (and not just coding for a hobby), enabling collaboration is far more important than whether it lets the programmer feel clever and powerful. (Hobby coding is cool and important too, but the aims are different.)
- tdb7893 8y agoI get your point but it seems unnecessary to optimize verbage like "power" or "leverage" if there's a popular view that the language isn't easily readable. If you can't convince people the language is readable it seems like it isn't going to get use outside of hardcore fans or trivial applications anyway.