[net.lang] high levity and unique solutions

rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (01/17/85)

On one of the side discussions on measuring the "level" of a language:
> ... how about this definition:
> The degree of high-levelness of a language X for a problem Y is
> defined as the size of the biggest subset of a set of programmers
> who come up with the same solution, divided by the size of the
> base set.

There is a property of programming languages (I'm not sure just what to
call it; perhaps "richness"?) that allows many ways of expressing the same
sort of solution to the same problem.  I don't think it's particularly
related to either the level or the quality of the language.  For example, I
find that it's quite common to find only one good way to express something
in Pascal.  There are more ways to express it in C.  In Icon, it seems like
there may be dozens of ways to say something, all equally good and probably
equally clear.  Yet on a scale of "level" I would place C slightly lower
than Pascal (save the flames), and both much lower than Icon.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...A friend of the devil is a friend of mine.