What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Torben Ægidius Mogensen]

Pascal Costanza <pc at p-cos.net> writes:

> Torben Ægidius Mogensen wrote:

> > So while it may take longer to get a program that gets
> > past the compiler, it takes less time to get a program that works.
> 
> That's incorrect. See http://haskell.org/papers/NSWC/jfp.ps -
> especially Figure 3.

There are many other differences between these languages than static
vs. dynamic types, and some of these differences are likely to be more
significant.  What you need to test is langauges with similar features
and syntax, except one is statically typed and the other dynamically
typed.

And since these languages would be quite similar, you can use the same
test persons: First let one half solve a problem in the statically
typed language and the other half the same problem in the dynamically
typed language, then swap for the next problem.  If you let a dozen
persons each solve half a dozen problems, half in the statically typed
language and half in the dynamically typed language (using different
splits for each problem), you might get a useful figure.

        Torben