
Ask HN: To what extent does succinctness = power in a programming language? - acalderaro
I was reading PG&#x27;s essay succinctness is power, and he left an open question. Is succinctness the same thing as power? What is the end-goal of abstraction if not to be more succinct?
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PaulHoule
"I got sick and tired of programming in blub and then I realized blub only had
23 keywords so I abbreviated them to a single lowercase letter and have people
write identifiers starting with either an uppercase letter or one of the three
remaining lowercase letters. Ever since I started programming in 'b' I started
wearing out keyboards so often -- those blub programmers will never understand
the value of 'b' being a succint language since they have never used one.

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blackflame7000
I would say succinctness = productivity but not necessarily power. It could be
argued that succinct code is easier to digest and less prone to bugs, but on
the flipside brevity in the description of what the code is doing is the bane
of all maintainers existence. There is certainly a threshold where
succinctness starts to be detrimental in the ability to express and convey
logic to next person who looks at your code.

