It is not the language that needs to be clear, it is the program.In general the larger the vocabulary and therefore the longer requirement to become proficient, the less clear. Once you are proficient, clarity is all on the programmer. That was Peter's point. So I guess I haven't added anything to the discussion....
I remember how baffled I was when I first went from ASP and VBScript to PHP. I thought, "Why the HELL do I need all these ways to do the same thing?" But with a limited toolkit one must sometimes bend over backwards and in the process create opaque code. So ultimately, a rich toolkit can lead to more elegant code though it is opaque to the novice.
Steve Lamb wrote:
This is disingenious to say the least. Are you trying to say that brainfuck is just as clear as, say, Perl? For some examples:http://esoteric.sange.fi/brainfuck/bf-golf-results/results0.txt Extreme cases, to be sure, and yet Perl has such a lovely thing as this${$foo} which is far simpler in Python (being just foo). Just as brainfuck is, as it's name implies, a brain fuck so too is Perl harder to read than Python. That isn't a matter of subjectiveness. It can be argued on a quantifiable level.
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