Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!news.cs.indiana.edu!ariel.unm.edu!ghostwheel.unm.edu!john
From: john@ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work
Message-ID: <1990Dec10.024337.15448@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 90 02:43:37 GMT
References: <18016@hydra.gatech.EDU> <16671@csli.Stanford.EDU> <77124@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <1284:Dec1000:04:3190@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Sender: John K. Prentice
Organization: University of New Mexico Math Dept., Albuquerque, NM
Lines: 26

In article <1284:Dec1000:04:3190@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>
>There is one big advantage to conciseness: readability. People often
>underestimate how important it is to have complete context on the same
>page. You have to balance this against the disadvantage of unfamiliar
>notations. For a C programmer, ?: is perfectly natural, so the above
>expression has the advantage of taking up less space without any
>disadvantages.
>

I would agree, up to a point.  Conciseness can also be confusing, even
to the initiated.  Is it not true that there is an annual contest to write the
most obscure working C code possible?  And is it not further true that
the usual winner has managed to be obscure through the use of
conciseness?  I still agree with your statement in general, but it can
easily be taken to extremes.  I have read a lot of German (East German,
back when that meant something) mathematical papers that had so much
economy of expression that they were virtually impossible to comprehend.
One has to be very, very careful here.  In either case, I would argue that
conciseness is nearly always a disadvantage when you are just learning
something, like a computer language.  It may be okay once you have done it
for a while, but it can really increase the time it takes to learn.  You
see this all the time when people try to learn C.  All you have to do is
read the C group and watch all the questions posted by the new programmers.

John