It feels like a common sentiment that concise code == good code

mjcohen · on Dec 16, 2019

APL may be a counterexample, at least when trying to understand what you have written a few months later.

driver733 · on Dec 16, 2019

To be more precise, I would say that expressive code == good code

martin1975 · on Dec 16, 2019

As long as expressive doesn't mean too terse and somewhat readable to most...lest you commit perl's sins.

dajohnson89 · on Dec 16, 2019

Yeah. This was the point I was halfheartedly making -- concise code for the sake of concise code is a dogma that needs to go away.

rongenre · on Dec 16, 2019

Well, more to the point - bugs / LOC is remarkably constant in real code across coding languages, so one of the best things you can do is reduce LOC.

pkolaczk · on Dec 17, 2019

You're missing the fact that the constant factor differs between languages. The density (bugs per LOC) of memory handling bugs is much different in Rust than in C.

rongenre · on Dec 18, 2019

Nope.

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1856...

pkolaczk · on Dec 18, 2019

The link you gave confirms what I've said here.

> The quote is either wrong or outdated. In the second edition, it's on page 521: "Industry average experience is about 1 - 25 errors per 1000 lines of code for delivered software. The software has usually been developed using a hodgepodge of techniques.

1-25 is not a single number - it is a range.

ivolimmen · on Dec 17, 2019

Well: less code means less bugs doesn't it?

smt88 · on Dec 16, 2019

That's true, and Kotlin definitely leans into it, but extremely concise code basically ends up looking like Brainfuck -- lots of symbols jammed together and hard to read.