7 ms·

> “It is a lot easier to find your errors in four lines of code than in four hundred.” Looking at his code on http://www.kparc.com/edit.k http://www.kparc.com/

> “It is a lot easier to find your errors in four lines of code than in four hundred.” Looking at his code on http://www.kparc.com/edit.k http://www.kparc.com/edit.k I'd like to disagree with that statement

wyc 12y ago
If I posted four lines of Chinese or Sanskrit, it's likely that native English speakers would disagree that they had much meaning either. However, this doesn't mean that those lines are inherently devoid of meaning or difficult to parse.
- uberalex 12y ago
  I think that the issue is that just measuring simplicity in terms of number of lines is a bad metric. You can have extremely complex expressions in a single statement that are at least as hard to read and debug as an equivalent, much longer piece of code that employs temporary variables and single-purpose statements.
  - geocar 12y ago
    I disagree fundamentally. I have noticed every page I scroll causes a comprehensive loss of around 90%, so in reading something that is 10 pagefuls long, I might only be able to produce a tiny part of the program. Your milage may vary. I find not scrolling, and just moving my eyes, I rapidly absorb the program, and I find most bugs just by reading the code. This practice is absolutely impossible for me if I have to scroll very far and made difficult by scrolling at all. It is for this reason that I find simply counting the actual words to be an excellent estimate of complexity. By the way: There are several temporary variables in that code; c:: creates a view called "c" which automatically updates whenever the dependent variables on the right side change.
    - dang 12y ago
      Yes, the research literature on software development has consistently found that code size is the best measurement of complexity and predictor of error rates. (Sorry I don't have citations handy but we've discussed this many times on HN, and there's a recent study in the book "Making Software" that adds to it.) What's interesting is how strongly this goes against what most people think they know about good programming and clear code.
      - geocar 12y ago
        If someone produces smaller and faster code than me, then I should want to learn from it. I wonder why other people have the exact opposite reaction. Why do you think that is?
        beagle3 12y ago
        I don't understand it either. But it happens everywhere, not just in code. Most people are only interested in the "truth" and "facts" as long as it fits within their existing world view. And things like K rarely do.
        gcanyon 12y ago
        I'm not sure -- I know that after the fourth or fifth time solving a problem on projecteuler.net in 20 lines of code and seeing someone post a 1-line J/K solution, I went and downloaded J. I even managed to solve a few euler problems with it, which I regard as a large accomplishment for a novice. I like to tell people I've written a whole twenty or so lines of code in J!
        kelnos 12y ago
        I do enjoy learning about such things, but, for most of the work I do, performance is nowhere near at the top of the list of things I care about. Also in the past I've been burned by code that's small/fast but is otherwise utterly unmaintainable. I'm not saying that's the case here, but... past experience, and all that tends to color perceptions. I think with a language like k or q, which appears to be purpose-built for certain types of problems, people look at it and get easily confused and discouraged because it's so different from all the more mainstream general-purpose programming languages they're used to. And it's a lot easier to put down something you don't understand than to admit you don't get it, or to spend lots of time learning something that may not be of much use to you. Kinda sucks, but it's often human nature.
    - qfan 12y ago
      Scrolling doesn't bother me, but unnecessary code does. So long as I can see the algorithm on the screen that's fine. Love the kOS idea, keep on it!
  - wglb 12y ago
    Actually it is a good metric, certainly to the first order. Yes, you can have a line or three that is more complex than the rest but practically it isn't going to reduce the line count that much. And token counts don't help as code that insists that each brace must be on its own line detracts from readability. For one thing it pushes the last bit of the function off the bottom of the screen meaning you have to scroll. A line that is overly complex is eventually get rewritten. I say this as someone who has written large bodies of code in sigma 5 assembly, Fortran II and IV bliss 36, C, C++, and Lisp. Perhaps more to the point, these days I read large bodies of code measured in millions. Lines of code dictates how long it will take to understand it. Peter Norvig in paip gives some examples of small code and how it can be exceedingly clear.
- 616c 12y ago
  That is a fun experiment. I studied linguistics in college, and I do not think anyone ever discussed textual density of different languages with the "same" content (the latter part would be its own terrifying chestnut; if you have not studied machine translation and semantic eval and good luck ever confirming such a statement). I studied Arabic a lot, and Chinese about a year. I cannot speak to Chinese with only one hazy year under my belt, but I can speak to Arabic. Because Arabic has lots of syntax realized at the morpholgical level, you can encode a whole sentence (subject (with declension inherent and gender variable, verb conjugated (to passive/active, past/present/future, standard/subjunctive) and direct object (declension inherent and gender variable) all in one word as we know the in English. أضربه (A-dr-b-u; a (I) dr-b (hit) u (him/it): I hit him (present tense) And that is a super simple example. I have seen much more compicated setences in one word, and even better in two or three. So, I hypothesized Arabic is very, very dense. I think and Russian and others could be considered similar. However, with this level of density (maybe we argue "compression" from a CS perspective) I noticed books and their translation were routinely about the same length in pages. Never identical mind you, but never something crazy like 50 pages more (I am guessing; it has been a long time since I made such an experiment and would have trouble agreeing with someone on what is significant). Now, one could hypothesize a shitload about what this means, but computation is realized as the same "stuff" (machine code instructions) in programming languages, where no parallel exists in human language for mapping human language to computaion, as far as I know from my between minor and major courseload in linguistics, specifically computational linguistics. If someone can contradict me, I would LOVE to read about measured cognition and language constructs.
  - geocar 12y ago
    I disagree: Translations are rarely accused of being as good or as comprehensive as the original. The fact that you can tell a story in 300 pages in Arabic and 300 pages in English is irrelevant. Iverson received a turing award[1] for his work on this subject. [1]: http://www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf http://www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf
    - 616c 12y ago
      Cool. Will definitely read more about this then.
- bhuztez 12y ago
  It is a pity that they don't use Chinese symbols but invented their own. I really hope one day I can write programs in Chinese, i.e., programs are also valid Chinese, and have the same meaning.
shiven 12y ago
Looks closer to BrainFuck[0] than any other language. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

wyc 12y ago

If I posted four lines of Chinese or Sanskrit, it's likely that native English speakers would disagree that they had much meaning either. However, this doesn't mean that those lines are inherently devoid of meaning or difficult to parse.

uberalex 12y ago
I think that the issue is that just measuring simplicity in terms of number of lines is a bad metric. You can have extremely complex expressions in a single statement that are at least as hard to read and debug as an equivalent, much longer piece of code that employs temporary variables and single-purpose statements.
- geocar 12y ago
  I disagree fundamentally. I have noticed every page I scroll causes a comprehensive loss of around 90%, so in reading something that is 10 pagefuls long, I might only be able to produce a tiny part of the program. Your milage may vary. I find not scrolling, and just moving my eyes, I rapidly absorb the program, and I find most bugs just by reading the code. This practice is absolutely impossible for me if I have to scroll very far and made difficult by scrolling at all. It is for this reason that I find simply counting the actual words to be an excellent estimate of complexity. By the way: There are several temporary variables in that code; c:: creates a view called "c" which automatically updates whenever the dependent variables on the right side change.
  - dang 12y ago
    Yes, the research literature on software development has consistently found that code size is the best measurement of complexity and predictor of error rates. (Sorry I don't have citations handy but we've discussed this many times on HN, and there's a recent study in the book "Making Software" that adds to it.) What's interesting is how strongly this goes against what most people think they know about good programming and clear code.
    - geocar 12y ago
      If someone produces smaller and faster code than me, then I should want to learn from it. I wonder why other people have the exact opposite reaction. Why do you think that is?
      - beagle3 12y ago
        I don't understand it either. But it happens everywhere, not just in code. Most people are only interested in the "truth" and "facts" as long as it fits within their existing world view. And things like K rarely do.
      - gcanyon 12y ago
        I'm not sure -- I know that after the fourth or fifth time solving a problem on projecteuler.net in 20 lines of code and seeing someone post a 1-line J/K solution, I went and downloaded J. I even managed to solve a few euler problems with it, which I regard as a large accomplishment for a novice. I like to tell people I've written a whole twenty or so lines of code in J!
      - kelnos 12y ago
        I do enjoy learning about such things, but, for most of the work I do, performance is nowhere near at the top of the list of things I care about. Also in the past I've been burned by code that's small/fast but is otherwise utterly unmaintainable. I'm not saying that's the case here, but... past experience, and all that tends to color perceptions. I think with a language like k or q, which appears to be purpose-built for certain types of problems, people look at it and get easily confused and discouraged because it's so different from all the more mainstream general-purpose programming languages they're used to. And it's a lot easier to put down something you don't understand than to admit you don't get it, or to spend lots of time learning something that may not be of much use to you. Kinda sucks, but it's often human nature.
  - qfan 12y ago
    Scrolling doesn't bother me, but unnecessary code does. So long as I can see the algorithm on the screen that's fine. Love the kOS idea, keep on it!
- wglb 12y ago
  Actually it is a good metric, certainly to the first order. Yes, you can have a line or three that is more complex than the rest but practically it isn't going to reduce the line count that much. And token counts don't help as code that insists that each brace must be on its own line detracts from readability. For one thing it pushes the last bit of the function off the bottom of the screen meaning you have to scroll. A line that is overly complex is eventually get rewritten. I say this as someone who has written large bodies of code in sigma 5 assembly, Fortran II and IV bliss 36, C, C++, and Lisp. Perhaps more to the point, these days I read large bodies of code measured in millions. Lines of code dictates how long it will take to understand it. Peter Norvig in paip gives some examples of small code and how it can be exceedingly clear.
616c 12y ago
That is a fun experiment. I studied linguistics in college, and I do not think anyone ever discussed textual density of different languages with the "same" content (the latter part would be its own terrifying chestnut; if you have not studied machine translation and semantic eval and good luck ever confirming such a statement). I studied Arabic a lot, and Chinese about a year. I cannot speak to Chinese with only one hazy year under my belt, but I can speak to Arabic. Because Arabic has lots of syntax realized at the morpholgical level, you can encode a whole sentence (subject (with declension inherent and gender variable, verb conjugated (to passive/active, past/present/future, standard/subjunctive) and direct object (declension inherent and gender variable) all in one word as we know the in English. أضربه (A-dr-b-u; a (I) dr-b (hit) u (him/it): I hit him (present tense) And that is a super simple example. I have seen much more compicated setences in one word, and even better in two or three. So, I hypothesized Arabic is very, very dense. I think and Russian and others could be considered similar. However, with this level of density (maybe we argue "compression" from a CS perspective) I noticed books and their translation were routinely about the same length in pages. Never identical mind you, but never something crazy like 50 pages more (I am guessing; it has been a long time since I made such an experiment and would have trouble agreeing with someone on what is significant). Now, one could hypothesize a shitload about what this means, but computation is realized as the same "stuff" (machine code instructions) in programming languages, where no parallel exists in human language for mapping human language to computaion, as far as I know from my between minor and major courseload in linguistics, specifically computational linguistics. If someone can contradict me, I would LOVE to read about measured cognition and language constructs.
- geocar 12y ago
  I disagree: Translations are rarely accused of being as good or as comprehensive as the original. The fact that you can tell a story in 300 pages in Arabic and 300 pages in English is irrelevant. Iverson received a turing award[1] for his work on this subject. [1]: http://www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf http://www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf
  - 616c 12y ago
    Cool. Will definitely read more about this then.
bhuztez 12y ago
It is a pity that they don't use Chinese symbols but invented their own. I really hope one day I can write programs in Chinese, i.e., programs are also valid Chinese, and have the same meaning.

shiven 12y ago

Looks closer to BrainFuck[0] than any other language. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck