[radanskoric]

It depends on the flexibility of the API. If you're making an API for just one specific use case, you can make it a one liner in any language, even assembler: just push the exact specific functionality into the one function.

Language expressiveness is more about making the interface support more use case while still being as concise. And Ruby is really good at this, better than most languages.

[johnisgood]

I don't disagree, I do find Ruby readable, and it was the first language that caught my eye back when I was a kid, precisely because of its readability and expressiveness.

I suppose we have to define expressiveness (conciseness, abstraction power, readability, flexibility?), because Ruby, for example, has human-readable expressiveness, Common Lisp has programmable expressiveness, and Forth has low-level expressiveness, so they all have some form of expressiveness.

I think Ruby, Crystal, Rebol 3, and even Nim and Lua have a similar form or type of expressiveness.

[radanskoric]

Yes, exactly, Ruby has the human readability expressiveness.

If you say that expressivity is the ability to implement a program in less lines of code then Ruby is more expressive than most but less than for example Clojure. Well written Clojure can be incredibly expressive. However, you can argue that for most people it's going to be less readable than a comparable Ruby program.

It's hard to talk about these qualities as there's a fair amount of subjectivity involved.

[johnisgood]

I think I would be able to read Ruby better than Clojure.

But yeah, you are right, there is too much subjectivity involved in all of this. :)

Anyways, I hope you know I did not mean to use any of my comments against you, I was just wondering.

[radanskoric]

No worries, I didn't think that's the case. :)

It's an interesting conversation.