Post #563590

2026-03-07 02:47 UTC

@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz @kentpitman@climatejustice.social @ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org @screwlisp@gamerplus.org @cdegroot@mstdn.ca You may say that untyped lambda calculus and SKI combinatory calculus and so on) are all *dreadful* in terms of expressiveness, and I will probably agree, ... but it also seems to me that Barendregt got pretty good at it. I'm also guessing TECO wouldn't have existed without there being people who managed to wrap their brains around it and found it to be expressive and concise. I myself never got there (also never really tried TBH), ... but at the same time, it's *still* the case that if I need to write a one-liner to do something, chances are, I'll be doing it in Perl, and I've heard people complain about *that* language being essentially write-only line-noise. 10/11

Replies (2)

@wrog@mastodon.murkworks.net 2026-03-07 02:50

@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz @kentpitman@climatejustice.social @ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org @screwlisp@gamerplus.org @cdegroot@mstdn.ca To be sure, my Perl tends to be more structured. On the other hand, I also hate Moose (Perl's attempt at CLOS) and have thus far succeeded in keeping that out of my life. I also remember there being a time in my life when I could read and understand APL. But if you do think it's possible to come up with some kind of useful formal definition/criterion for "expressiveness", go for it. I'll believe it when I see it. 11/11

Open ##563627
@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz 2026-03-07 19:02

@wrog > I'm also guessing TECO wouldn't have existed without there being people who managed to wrap their brains around it and found it to be expressive and concise. I myself never got there (also never really tried TBH), I'm one of those people, BTW. My proof is that I wrote a closed-loop stick figure ASCII animation juggling three balls. As with any complex TECO thing, the resulting code was write-only -- and that was always the problem with even mildly powerful TECO macros. Perl at its worst can be described as write-only line noise, yes, but in my experience is *STILL* better than TECO! I am indeed fortunate to be able to stick with Emacs and Vi. @kentpitman @ramin_hal9001 @screwlisp @cdegroot

Open ##1444947