> "Hartmann Schaffer" <h...@hartmann.schaffernet> wrote in message
> news:WqfMe.1588$Dd.6727@newscontent-01.sprint.ca...
>> Jon Harrop wrote:
>>> ...
> JH>> However, LOC overly penalises Lisp and Scheme, IMHO. Specifically,
> Lisp and
> JH>> Scheme programs are virtually unreadable unless the parentheses are
> JH>> staggered by spreading expressions over several lines and using an
> JH>> automatic indenter. So if I were to put a Lisp implementation of the
> ray
> JH>> tracer on my site then I'd either state that, or I'd give results
> using
> JH>> some other measure of verbosity, like characters.

> Hmm.  What would you (JH) be measuring here?

> a) Keystrokes required to produce the code (see below, though)
> b) Some kind of 'intrinsic verbosity', which would require some *serious*
> thinking about idiomaticity, relevance of formatting and massive, massive
> sampling to make it statistically relevant.

>> i doubt lisp or scheme will gain anything there:  the language defined
>> words tend to be quite lengthy, and afaict that seems to encourage
>> programmers to use pretty length identifiers for their own identifiers,

> Yes

>> so character count might penalize lisp even worse.  otoh, the lengthy
>> identifiers make lisp code quite easy to read and understand.

> Yes, and using a decent editor with auto-completion (Emacs) means that I
> hit less keys to produce the token 'DESTRUCTURING-BIND' ( DE-B
> <META-TAB> ) than you might think.

> Oh, and all the ')))))' you see probably didn't get typed by hand (
> <META-RET> closes all open parens).

>> token count probably would be better

> Yep, although (because I am biased) I would like to see
> 'keystroke/mouse-click' count instead.  I think that with the requirement
> for idiomatic variable naming, CL might not come out as 'verbose' as you
> think...

>>> ...

>> hs