

2500 words on the subject of brevity in programming - MikeTaylor
http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/so-what-actually-is-my-favourite-programming-language/

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RodgerTheGreat
It is mentioned in the comments, but bears repeating here-

The author's example of "overly verbose" Java is rather unfair. Compare the
11-line example with loads of temporary variables to something like this:

    
    
      Set results = new SortedSet();
      for (Method m : String.Class.getMethods()) {
      	if (m.getName().toLowerCase().contains("index")) {
      		results.add(m.getName());
      	}
      }
      return results.toArray();

~~~
AndrewDucker
I had a play with LINQ in C# to see how similar I could make it:

After adding a couple of extension methods (to make the syntax more similar) I
can write:

    
    
      from methodName in "".MethodNames() 
      where methodName.Grep("index",RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) 
      orderby methodName select methodName;
    

in C#

~~~
AndrewDucker
And an even simpler one:

    
    
      "".MethodNames().Where(m => m.Grep("index",RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)).OrderBy(m => m)

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fierarul
"Hello world" must go away from all language examples.

It's irrelevant how complex doing hello world in Java is since no user
actually cares about stuff visible in text mode starting a decade or more
back.

Of course, Java won't win a brevity contest, but System.out.println isn't the
best pick to demonstrate this.

~~~
MikeTaylor
Well, that's why I went straight on to something else.

But anyway I can't agree that "no user actually cares about stuff visible in
text mode". There is a very substantial community of programmers that don't
like to use IDEs.

~~~
skermes
More importantly, embedding very much non-trivial code in the context of an
essay like this is impractical. I don't want (or need) to see an entire
application written in both Java and Ruby to get the point. Any code sample
that can be reasonably inserted into the text without unduly breaking the flow
is going to be simple; hello world is as good as any.

------
orborde
Every time I see a reprog post, I get hungry from all those pictures of sushi.

~~~
MikeTaylor
Heh heh, my plan is working :-)

Actually, there IS a plan, sort of. At first I just threw in the odd random
picture so that the blog would look a bit more interesting than long blocks of
text (one of the early posts has the Buffy cast in it); but I quickly found
myself falling into the habit of using only sushi, because I liked the visual
thematic unity that those pictures give me.

(The last photo in that particular article fills me with so much sushi-lust
that I could hardly concentrate on the argument I was trying to make.)

