brian d foy wrote: > You have to note that rewriting a program, even in the same language, > tends to make it shorter, too. These things are measures of programmer > skill, not the usefulness or merit of a particular language.
I completely agree. But you have to start somewhere. > Shorter doesn't really mean anything though, and line count means even > less. The number of statements or the statement density might be > slightly more meaningful. Furthermore, you can't judge a script by just > the lines you see. Count the lines of all the libraries and support > files that come into play. Even then, that's next to meaningless unless > the two things do exactly the same thing and have exactly the same > features and capabilities. For an objective measure of which language/environment is more optimal for a given task, your statement is completely accurate. OTOH for a quick-and-dirty real-world comparison of line counts, and possibly a rough approximation of complexity, the libraries don't matter if they offer more-or-less comparable functionality. Especially if those libraries are the standard ones most people rely on. I'm not attaching any special significance to line counts. They're just a data point that's easy to quantify. What if anything do they mean? How does one measure statement density? What's the divisor in the density ratio - lines, characters, units of work, etc? These are all interesting questions with no easy answers. > I can write a one line (or very short) program (in any language) that > does the same thing your scripts do just by hiding the good stuff in a > library. One of my friends likes to talk about his program that > implements Tetris in one statement (because he hardwired everything > into a chip). That doesn't lead us to any greater understanding of > anything though. Of course. Extreme cases are just that. -- Edward Elliott UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) complangpython at eddeye dot net -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
