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Not once in his comment did he say anything even close to 'being more powerful'. Why did you interpret it that way? You appear to be confusing a well made poin

Not once in his comment did he say anything even close to 'being more powerful'. Why did you interpret it that way? You appear to be confusing a well made point with something that was never said.

SeanLuke 16y ago
Let us try again. He is confusing having more features with being "more expressive" (whatever that means). And even if we work out what that means, he's confusing "being more expressive" with "being more powerful" (whatever THAT means). By this logic, C++ is the language to beat.
- viraptor 16y ago
  Expressiveness usually means "working code to boilerplate ratio". For example: (C#) SomeMethod((x) => SomeOtherMethod(x)); is more expressive than: (java) class WrapperIDontReallyNeed() { public void AnotherWrapper(uselessType x) { SomeOtherMethod(x); } } ... SomeMethod(new WrapperIDontReallyNeed()); (or anonymous classes - before someone points out they exist - just trading Wrapper for IWrapper and no `class` keyword) And again - I don't see any mention from his side about being powerful. I don't think he's confusing anything either - expressiveness of a language is a pretty common term and is true in this case. C++ is easy to beat from that point of view, unless you add a tonne of Boost.
- arethuza 16y ago
  I think in terms of raw feature count Common Lisp probably "wins" - I can recommend a read through Steele's Common Lisp the Language if you have some time to spare: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/cltl2.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/cltl2.html
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    Surely not! Lisp must have close to the fewest features of any language (other than the weird ones like Brainf*ck that only have 8 instructions). Other than Macros and parenthesis there isn't anything to it. If I remember correctly, pretty much all you need to do to write your own lisp is to implement eval.
    - arethuza 16y ago
      That's the basic syntax of Lisp that you are thinking of - they actual Common Lisp language has a metric shipload of built in features from basic functions, data types through to things like the Loop macro right up to decidedly non-trivial things like CLOS.

Not once in his comment did he say anything even close to 'being more powerful'. Why did you interpret it that way? You appear to be confusing a well made point with something that was never said.

SeanLuke 16y ago

Let us try again. He is confusing having more features with being "more expressive" (whatever that means). And even if we work out what that means, he's confusing "being more expressive" with "being more powerful" (whatever THAT means). By this logic, C++ is the language to beat.

viraptor 16y ago
Expressiveness usually means "working code to boilerplate ratio". For example: (C#) SomeMethod((x) => SomeOtherMethod(x)); is more expressive than: (java) class WrapperIDontReallyNeed() { public void AnotherWrapper(uselessType x) { SomeOtherMethod(x); } } ... SomeMethod(new WrapperIDontReallyNeed()); (or anonymous classes - before someone points out they exist - just trading Wrapper for IWrapper and no `class` keyword) And again - I don't see any mention from his side about being powerful. I don't think he's confusing anything either - expressiveness of a language is a pretty common term and is true in this case. C++ is easy to beat from that point of view, unless you add a tonne of Boost.
arethuza 16y ago
I think in terms of raw feature count Common Lisp probably "wins" - I can recommend a read through Steele's Common Lisp the Language if you have some time to spare: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/cltl2.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/cltl2.html
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  Surely not! Lisp must have close to the fewest features of any language (other than the weird ones like Brainf*ck that only have 8 instructions). Other than Macros and parenthesis there isn't anything to it. If I remember correctly, pretty much all you need to do to write your own lisp is to implement eval.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    That's the basic syntax of Lisp that you are thinking of - they actual Common Lisp language has a metric shipload of built in features from basic functions, data types through to things like the Loop macro right up to decidedly non-trivial things like CLOS.