Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.lisp
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From: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke)
Subject: Re: Comparing productivity: LisP against C++ (was Re: Reference Counting)
Message-ID: <D1BGss.3C1@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
Organization: none. Disorganization: total.
References: <3d5alh$6j7@celebrian.otago.ac.nz> <HUNTER.94Dec20152915@work.nlm.nih.gov> <3d86vh$1na@Mars.mcs.com> <D15BJ1.5Gq@research.att.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 1994 13:14:51 GMT
Lines: 32
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.c++:104831 comp.lang.lisp:16189

In article <D15BJ1.5Gq@research.att.com>,
Andrew Koenig <ark@research.att.com> wrote:
>In article <3d86vh$1na@Mars.mcs.com> tmoog@MCS.COM (Thomas H. Moog) writes:
>
>> There is a way to measure language complexity to one significant
>> digit: the size of a good manual for the language.  The essentials for
>> SmallTalk are covered in about 100 pages of the blue book by Goldberg
>> (the rest is the "standard library" and details of implementation).
>> The C++ ARM is about 400 pages and is much more difficult reading then
>> Goldberg.  How large is a Lisp manual ?
>
>The Common Lisp manual is about 1,100 pages.
>-- 
>				--Andrew Koenig
>				  ark@research.att.com

Come on, guys, this is stupid. CLtL2 is far more than 'the essentials'
of the language; it's got masses of standard library and other stuff.

The essentials of LisP are, pretty much, EVAL, APPLY, SET, COND and
CONS, and can be written on one page. Common LISP is a bit more of a
bugger, because of things like keywords in lambda lists, but even so
you shouldn't need more than a dozen pages to describe it. You can't
do this sort of thing with an Algol family language, because it hasn't
any formal basis to start with: *everything* is special cases. Look at
the rules in C for operator precedence, for example.

-- 
--------simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk

	How many pentium designers does it take to change a lightbulb?
		1.99904274017
