Agreed. The only way that I consider Ruby as being more succinct
compared to other languages such as C++, C, Java, VB, etc. is that
there's less curly braces, and no redundant typing of new static
variables. God, I'm glad I can choose what I program in!
While I don't think Paul Graham's idea of succinctness is the only
measure of the value of a programming language, I think he's on to
something. Succinctness can give you an idea of the level at which
concepts can be expressed in a language.
By way of example, here's some code from one of my production Ruby
apps that takes an array of different versions of a Monkey object
(don't ask), and returns a new array containing the changes between
each version and the next:
monkeys.enum_cons(2).collect {|a, b| b.differences_from(a) }
This is a lot more succinct than any way I can think to write the
equivalent in C++, C, Java, VB, etc. precisely because Ruby has
constructs that let me express the ideas of "step through pairs of
elements in this array" and "collect the results of applying an
operation to each one". In most languages, of course, I'd have to
write my own loop and do this step by step.
This is powerful because I'm expressing things in the same way I
naturally think about the problem: step through the array in pairs,
collecting the results of taking the differences between each pair.
That means fewer errors, simpler testing, more confidence in the
code, and better readability and maintainability.
So we have some good succinct code. Is the succinctness what's good
about it? Not in itself, but the succinctness certainly hints that we
must be describing our solution at a fairly high level, and that's a
good thing.
Pete Yandell
