3 ms·

You really don't want to lean on empiricism for PL, but: http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techrepo

You really don't want to lean on empiricism for PL, but: http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf

infraruby 12y ago
> You really don't want to lean on empiricism for PL Why not? considering "more likely to be correct" is an empirical claim. > http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf Haskell vs Ada, C++, etc. in 1994.
- coolsunglasses 12y ago
  Because all comparative PL studies are nonsense, including that one. Look at the experiment methodology described in most of them. We have something better for evaluating PLs.
  - infraruby 12y ago
    > We have something better for evaluating PLs. Do tell! How do you evaluate empirical claims (about programming languages) without empirical evidence?
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Empirical evaluations break down quickly as the complexity of what is being measured increases, so your best bet in doing a study is to focus on one or a few features. PLs are of course evaluated over time in the market place over time, like any other designed artifact.
- the_af 12y ago
  I love that report and find it very inspiring (and it gives me an intuition that Haskell has an edge over the other languages), but the methodology is very disappointing: - The requirements were mostly up to the interpretation of implementors, which more or less decided the scope of their programs. - All results were self-reported. Even ruling out dishonesty, there are a lot of ways uncontrolled experimenters can report incorrect results. - Many implementations weren't even runnable. - No code was run by the reviewers, at all. I really would love to see a more serious attempt at this experiment (probably with more modern languages).

3 ms·

You really don't want to lean on empiricism for PL, but: http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techrepo

by coolsunglasses 12y ago

You really don't want to lean on empiricism for PL, but: http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf

infraruby 12y ago
> You really don't want to lean on empiricism for PL Why not? considering "more likely to be correct" is an empirical claim. > http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf Haskell vs Ada, C++, etc. in 1994.
- coolsunglasses 12y ago
  Because all comparative PL studies are nonsense, including that one. Look at the experiment methodology described in most of them. We have something better for evaluating PLs.
  - infraruby 12y ago
    > We have something better for evaluating PLs. Do tell! How do you evaluate empirical claims (about programming languages) without empirical evidence?
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Empirical evaluations break down quickly as the complexity of what is being measured increases, so your best bet in doing a study is to focus on one or a few features. PLs are of course evaluated over time in the market place over time, like any other designed artifact.
- the_af 12y ago
  I love that report and find it very inspiring (and it gives me an intuition that Haskell has an edge over the other languages), but the methodology is very disappointing: - The requirements were mostly up to the interpretation of implementors, which more or less decided the scope of their programs. - All results were self-reported. Even ruling out dishonesty, there are a lot of ways uncontrolled experimenters can report incorrect results. - Many implementations weren't even runnable. - No code was run by the reviewers, at all. I really would love to see a more serious attempt at this experiment (probably with more modern languages).