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Comment by zabzonk | Hacker News Reader

yes - i switched from C to C++ a long, long time ago (late 1980s) because C++ was so much more strongly typed (i still don't understand why other C programmers have stuck with C). i'm less than convinced with the promises of rust (for e.g.), but have only written trivial programs in it.

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Because simpler languages are inherently better than more complicated ones.

Simpler languages often put more burden on the programmer.

There's a balance.

Well no, what do you think the word simpler means?

C is a simple language.

Rust is not a simple language.

Lisp is also a simple language.

Lua is simple as well (well… maybe not…)

JavaScript is not.

C++ is not.

C isn't a simple language, really, because it has a ton of implicit assumptions and inconsistencies, undefined behavior and all the failure modes you have to keep in your head at all times.

It's not that C is simpler, it's less expressive.

I don't think this answers parents question though, which is what does it mean for a language to be simpler? I think that's a good question. This is just a list of examples.

It almost seems like simple is a bad concept applied to languages because what's simple and complex is the idea you're trying to express, accurately, in its totality - not necessarily the language.

I think expressiveness is complexity.

The fewer ways there are to express an idea, the simpler the language is.

Simple languages do not imply simple software (look at lisp)

why? says who? assembler (about as simple as you can get) better than (for e.g.) C?

And even simpler is the iota combinator which is by itself turing complete. So a single letter plus matching parens is about the simplest language as you can get. But I can't imagine anyone wanting or even being able to program in it.

Assembler is a bad example for simplicity. Perhaps brainfuck fits better in this case.

Simpler aka Python, Ruby, Basic, Pascal, not "lower level".

"Simpler" isn't really a good adjective to classify languages. You have to be way more specific on what "simple" means. Are we talking characters needed to implement 'hello world?' Time to first memory access segfault? Number of pages in the specification (which, at this point, I'm not sure whether Python or C++ wins out...)? Lines of code in the compiler / interpreter?

i don't see those languages as being "simple". quick to program in, yes. but assembler is really pretty transparent, once you get into it. heck, i used to program in machine code (i don't recommend it) without too many problems.

Good luck programming your next application using the lamda calculus or a Turing machine.

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