Boilerplate Tax – Ranking popular programming languages by density (opens in new tab)

(boyter.org)

14 pointsnnx1mo ago13 comments

13 comments

"Clojure and indeed all lisp style languages are the final boss of density here though. Almost every line is an expression of business logic. I never really got into it myself, but looking at these results are starting to make me rethink that decision.

If you compare Clojure (77.91%) to C# (58.4%), it seems the average C# developer writes 20% more redundant code every single day just to satisfy the compiler. Even with tools like resharper and LLM’s to help thats not a insignificant amount of effort."

mrsmrtss1mo ago

C'mon, this is a bs "research".

Fore example, is this Java (65.72% dryness)

    if (condition){
      Blah();
    }

really more dense than this C# (58.4% dryness)?

    if (condition)
    {
      Blah();
    }

Now, does this Clojure 77.91 dryness) really beats them both to that margin?

   (if (condition) 
      (blah)))

This metric measures formatting more than anything else. I don't even go to other more nuanced details.

so-cal-schemer1mo ago

Good point. They should treat stand-alone braces and parens as empty lines and rerun the analysis. I'd like to see the results.

But still.. are 41.6% the lines of C# code stand-alone braces?

1 more reply

so-cal-schemer1mo ago

Succinctness is Power

https://paulgraham.com/power.html

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

13 comments

so-cal-schemer1mo ago

mrsmrtss1mo ago

C'mon, this is a bs "research".

Fore example, is this Java (65.72% dryness)

    if (condition){
      Blah();
    }

really more dense than this C# (58.4% dryness)?

    if (condition)
    {
      Blah();
    }

Now, does this Clojure 77.91 dryness) really beats them both to that margin?

   (if (condition) 
      (blah)))

This metric measures formatting more than anything else. I don't even go to other more nuanced details.

so-cal-schemer1mo ago

Good point. They should treat stand-alone braces and parens as empty lines and rerun the analysis. I'd like to see the results.

But still.. are 41.6% the lines of C# code stand-alone braces?

1 more reply

so-cal-schemer1mo ago

Succinctness is Power

https://paulgraham.com/power.html

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse