[Haskell-cafe] Language simplicity

[Andrew Coppin]

sylvain wrote:
> Le mardi 12 janvier 2010 à 21:25 +0000, Andrew Coppin a écrit :
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
>   
>> As you can see, this conclusively proves... something.
>>     
>
> What, exactly?
>   

Not a lot. As you so elegantly point out, the number of keywords in a 
language is a fairly crude measurement of how complex the language is or 
is not. On the other hand, like lines of code, it's something that's 
easy to measure. ;-)

Other such ways include taking the size of a gzip of a typical block of 
source code, like the Shootout does. This doesn't really prove anything 
though, because any benchmark can be implemented in more than one way. 
You could also try using how many pages it takes to explain the syntax 
of the language - but that also depends on how you explain it. 
Simplicity is really in the eye of the beholder, after all...