[jelliclesfarm]

>A more serious analysis of brevity might define it as “the entropy of a parse tree recursively inlined/macroexpanded down to language primitives.” This suggests our focus ought to be on two questions: how compressible are our primitives, and how can we enable users to achieve something close to optimal compression? Since the first question has a relative measure (what’s the compression ratio for our expanded parse tree?), we could productively iterate on both better primitives and better tools for abstracting over them.

But Graham’s analysis of brevity, and indeed of all language design, was fundamentally unserious. He wasn’t interested in a rigorous definition of brevity, because the ultimate measure of a language’s quality was still his hacker’s radar. All of his essays, and Arc itself, were just spokes around that central hub. If his essays sometimes disagreed, or if Arc didn’t reflect his essays, it’s hardly surprising; their only connection was they all, in the moment, seemed right and true to Paul Graham[..]

I dont understand what the author means by 'brevity'. Is that the same as what one might call 'elegant code'? I prefer to use the term elegant. From the article, it seems to me that PG's prefers elegant code that is modular and neat. It is reflected in his essays and how he approaches subjects.

Code can be elegant and modular. People are complex. You can hack them, but you cant debug people.

[ashtonkem]

It is quite explicit in the article that "brevity" is measured in literal characters. From a PG quote in the article:

> It would not be far from the truth to say that a hacker about to write a program decides what language to use, at least subconsciously, based on the total number of characters he’ll have to type.

[jelliclesfarm]

i know what brevity means. i choose to call it 'elegant' for the purposes of comparing it to his essays as the article mentions. his essays can sometimes be more rambling before it gets to the point. albeit precise. imo.

[ashtonkem]

More precise, according to whom? If PG is explicitly defining brevity as fewer characters, then redefining it to “elegance” is to simply ignore what PG said and replace it with something else. Perhaps that indeed is a better working definition, but if we’re commenting on PG’s articles then we need to look at what he actually said and not what you wish he’d said.

If you want to write your own articles and explicitly replace brevity with elegance, don’t let me stop you.

[jelliclesfarm]

wtf? (the rest of my response in it's brevity.)

thanks. have a great day.