From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" Date: 2006-09-05T02:40:23+09:00 Subject: Re: Joel Spolsky on languages for web programming Stephen Kellett wrote: > In message <44FB5AD5.5090508@comcast.net>, Devin Mullins > writes >> does clean mean? reduced duplication?). Pretty means fewer LOC, which >> is about the only objective measure of maintainability we know. > > I take it you've never had the pleasure of reading someone else's APL > code? Its about as dense as you can get in LOC. > > Sure is not easy to maintain. Often described as a "write only language". > > I think the word "pretty" is not the correct word, "elegant" would be > better. > > Stephen I've never written a line of APL code, but that hasn't ever stopped me from being able to read APL code if the need or desire to do so arose. There was a time when it was a dominant language in econometrics and computational finance; indeed, the "A Plus" open source descendant of APL originated at Morgan Stanley. APL and its original implementation APL\360 were/are works of pure genius. I was privileged to meet one of their creators (Falkoff) when I was a very young programmer working at IBM. APL is one of the few truly unique programming languages and possesses an elegant simplicity found, in my opinion anyway, in only two other programming languages -- Lisp/Scheme and Forth.