Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!newsfeed.tip.net!news.seinf.abb.se!nooft.abb.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netnews From: JEThomas@ix.netcom.com (Jonah Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.smalltalk Subject: Re: Rapid Prototyping + statically-typed OOPLs? Date: 22 Jul 1995 17:35:54 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 31 Distribution: world Message-ID: <3urctq$q83@ixnews6.ix.netcom.com> References: <805548287snz@galacta.demon.co.uk> <1995Jul13.154620.4333@rcmcon.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ix-dc12-03.ix.netcom.com Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.object:33916 comp.lang.beta:481 comp.lang.c++:130662 comp.lang.eiffel:9562 comp.lang.smalltalk:24745 In tynor@atlanta.twr.com (Steve Tynor) writes: >In article >Ian.Mitchell@sunderland.ac.uk (Ian Mitchell) writes: >| I think there is some confusion here as to my use of the >| word "terseness". I was thinking along the lines of the >... >| In other words a terse language is a language with very few >| keywords (C has 32, C++ has about 48). >Um. Eiffel has only 49 reserved words. Does that mean that C++ and >Eiffel are equally "terse"? :-) Forth has no reserved keywords. Forth's reputation for terseness isn't enough to justify a 0 score on this metric. So the metric doesn't properly represent terseness. Forth source files are often less than a tenth the size of C files with equivalent function. On the other hand, Forth programmer-hours are often as high as 25% of C hours for equivalent work. Forth typically involves a documentation:coding ratio of somewhere between 3:1 and 5:1, which may account for the inconsistency. But terseness reflects programmer style more than language constraints. Any extensible language will allow users to make their own new commands, and the better those are chosen for reuse the shorter the source code will be.