Xah's Edu Corner: What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Roedy Green]

On 19 Mar 2006 13:03:18 -0800, "Xah Lee" <xah at xahlee.org> wrote,
quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :

>One thing commonly misunderstood in computing industry is the notion of
>expressiveness. If a language has a vocabulary of (smile, laugh, grin,
>giggle, chuckle, guffaw, cackle), 

Expressive for a natural language refers to the language's ability to
generate precisely generate moods, and move people emotionally in a
minimum of words.

Expressiveness in computer languages refers to the language's ability
to persuade the computer to produce some result in a minimum of words.

Another measure might be how smoothly elements of the language map
onto elements of the problem domain.
-- 
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.