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I'm not sure why ppl are misunderstanding what I am saying. I'm not advocating COBOL-like languages. I'm saying assembler is better than writing in machine code
by okareaman 7y ago
I'm not sure why ppl are misunderstanding what I am saying. I'm not advocating COBOL-like languages. I'm saying assembler is better than writing in machine code, C is better than assembler and it would appear for most programmers, Python and JavaScript are the best choice but nobody who wants to keep their job writes code in the style of minified JavaScript or obfuscated C.
- eggy 7y agoTo some APL and J are the equivalent of C to assembler. It is not obfuscated, it is concise: brief but comprehensive, and easy to understand if you take the time to learn it like you would other PLs. I think Ken Iverson's "Notation as a Tool of Thought" covers this pretty well [1 PDF]. [1] http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pdf http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pd...
- okareaman 7y agoThank you, that's a fascinating article and I'm going to finish reading it, but I'm ot arguing against languages that are designed to be terse and expressive to a certain mode of thought, but rather languages like JavaScript that are not designed to be terse and are deliberately made so at the cost of readability. I just don't find it interesting. It does not follow that the resulting machine code is faster or smaller, so I don't see the point beyond playing a game with language.