Re: Comparing languages

This table is eight years old. Among other things, Lotus 123 for DOS scored 50. While I might find a spreadsheet useful for math, I'd hate to try to build, say, a Web browser with one...

I think that how languages compare depends on how you decide to score them, and you can pretty well get any results you want if you choose your criteria well. You can consider lines of code, programmer-hours of development time, maintainability, CPU cycles, write/compile/debug cycles, and who knows what else. Like anything else, how a language measures up depends mostly on what you consider important.

Comment on Re: Comparing languages

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Re^2: Comparing languages by aufflick (Deacon) on Oct 21, 2005 at 05:45 UTC
I added an update mentioning that certain comparisons were probably not valid, otherwise we should all be programming word processing suites in SQL and weather modelling in HTML :) I also agree with your comment "how a language measures up depends mostly on what you consider important", but I think it's fair to say that the things considered important by both a Ruby and Python developer are very similar (except semi-colons perhaps ;). Or a C programmer and Pascal programmer. Different languages are "more" supported in certain environments and certain developers are "easier" to hire etc. (the decision points are almost infinite), but where there is a choice, a more developer-efficient language will need less developers to be hired, less time to market and faster features added & bugs fixed. My feeling is that few considerations outwiegh those ones.	[reply]
Re^2: Comparing languages by mirod (Canon) on Oct 21, 2005 at 07:56 UTC
I don't know about a web browser, but it appears that it is possible to create games in Excel (and no, I did not look at the code, I don't want to loose what's left of my sanity!).	[reply]
Re^3: Comparing languages by spiritway (Vicar) on Oct 22, 2005 at 01:31 UTC
Come to think of it, I do recall seeing something about Conway's "game of life", implemented on a spreadsheet... Like you, I avoided looking at it...	[reply]
Re^2: Comparing languages by monarch (Priest) on Oct 21, 2005 at 22:47 UTC
I wonder how one would score or rate artistic techniques. One would presumably debate the usefulness, speed, and quality of: oil paints spray can crayons pens throwing food at a wall and so forth I guess art comes in many forms and perhaps we're all forgetting that, in many ways, programming is an art?	[reply]
Re^3: Comparing languages by aufflick (Deacon) on Oct 21, 2005 at 23:13 UTC
spray can would score high for efficiency. throwing food at a wall would score low for maintainability :)	[reply]


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