> And because "concise" should be measure in the number of tokens needed to achieve certain functionality, not by excessive use of single character tokens.
What's the difference if the symbols were meant to have specific mathematical meanings and are really meant to be the only representation?
> The q had exactly the same behaviour except some small changes for data ingestion. Around 500 lines of python, 16, not a typo, 16 lines of q. The performance comparison was absurd too.
I think this comes down to every symbol having a defined behavior that can be optimized around, rather than building a framework for creating your own symbols (functions). Dyalog APL has some similarly insane "beating C"-type benchmarks.
However, if you were to branch out into the more traditional constructs in Dyalog APL or J (K/Q have less of them due to being much, much less generalized), you'd probably see some significant performance decreases simply because they're more generalized. Eg. I doubt that Dyalog APL objects are as optimized as C++ objects.
Note: I have no experience designing languages or building compilers/interpreters. I just wanted to put my two cents in, rather than leave this on the somewhat vague and "mystical" note.
This. The last thing that anyone should want to hear is that the police are snapping under high-pressure situations, which are the situations where the average citizen is going to need them the most level-headed.
I just tried loading both websites in private windows on firefox and ublock origin:
old reddit loads in 1.75 seconds, 77 requests, and 10 things blocked by uOrigin, and I can see 8 pieces of news on the page which take most (75+%) of the visual real estate
new reddit loads in 4.75 seconds, 177 requests(!), 13 things blocked by uOrigin, and I can see one(!) actual item, which takes roughly 20% of the visual real estate
The new design also leads to one error in the console as my browser blocked a font ("downloadable font: rejected by sanitizer"). I can't imagine using their new design at all, and I'm not sure how they can justify the gap in these metrics for a company worth billions, unless a complete lack of useful information taking 3 times longer to load is what's trending.
edit: and it's not just me, pretty much any online tool I found gives similar outcomes.
> If that's what you aspire to, and aren't passionate about software -- which is perfectly fine! -- I guess learning some COBOL is a reasonable career choice.
This is a completely unfair assessment. Even if you're passionate about something, job stability and good pay are going to be the primary drivers in decisions about jobs. I doubt that most people choose, say, Java jobs because they're passionate about Java, or even software in general, for example.
From what I gather, most people leave the "passion" part of their work to part-time hobby work, allowing them to do both. If it then translates into money, good, but the few successes that have been put on blast have blinded people to the reality that passion != money.
Believe me: writing Java is on average more interesting than COBOL (I've done both, including some terrible Java systems using Enterprise Java Beans -- I still shudder at the thought -- and Java still wins). Then again, Java has been called "the next COBOL", so that's an interesting comparison.
> Even if you're passionate about something, job stability and good pay are going to be the primary drivers in decisions about jobs.
For a lot of people, yes. Not for all. And even then, it's hard to argue that COBOL is cool or interesting. It's just paying the bills, but nothing to get hyped or write gushing articles about. And there are more interesting programming jobs that will also pay the bills, anyway.
If there aren't, there aren't. In that case, there's no choice to be made.
I didn't mean to judge people and in fact tried not to, though perhaps clumsily. I said it's fair to not be passionate about the job. Often I haven't felt passionate about it either, or even particularly motivated. And do note I have worked in COBOL, so I understand the need. I just don't like the language and I don't want to see people selling the idea that it's "interesting" or a particularly sound business decision to learn it -- like those articles that occasionally get posted to HN.
What's the difference if the symbols were meant to have specific mathematical meanings and are really meant to be the only representation?
Plus, readability is subjective.