Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-athena.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!edsel!bentley!hoxna!houxm!whuxlm!akgua!sdcsvax!dcdwest!ittvax!decvax!mit-athena!jc From: jc@mit-athena.ARPA (John Chambers) Newsgroups: net.lang Subject: Re: High-levelity Message-ID: <96@mit-athena.ARPA> Date: Mon, 31-Dec-84 10:35:40 EST Article-I.D.: mit-athe.96 Posted: Mon Dec 31 10:35:40 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 3-Jan-85 04:06:58 EST References: <235@gumby.UUCP> Organization: MIT, Project Athena, Cambridge, Ma. Lines: 18 Hey, c'mon fellas! I mean, it's fun to read criticism and take pot shots at the pots shots, but where's your definition? I admitted at the start that mine was limited. Let's hear some better ones. If Lincoln had said the same things in 10,000 words, would we still remember the Gettysburg Address? Don't be silly! Terseness counts. I liked the comment about provability, perhaps because I can turn it around to support my liking of terseness. I've played around with provability, and one thing that is obvious is that difficulty of proving correctness goes up as a very bad function of the number of tokens. APL one-liners are usually easy to prove correct. Pascal 10-pagers are usually hopeless, even if they do the same thing in the same way. I suspect that C is hopeless in this respect. Or is it? But provability is only loosely related to high-levility. Or is it? John Chambers