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Comment by olavk | Hacker News Reader

Blubbiness is not a property of the language per se. Is it the phenomenon that you don't recognize if an unfamiliar language is more powerful than the currently most powerful language you know. The more powerful languages just seem bizarre are annoying. But you immediately recognize when a language is less powerful than one you know.

Therefore many developers think they are using the most powerful language in the world ("Blub").

So if Python is the most powerful language you know and you don't understand the power of eg. Lisp macros or the Haskell type system, then Python is Blub for you.

If Lisp is you favorite language and you don't understand the power of the Python readability, the concept of "one obvious way" and so on, then Lisp is Blub for you.

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the assumption is that languages vary in power, and furthermore that lisp sits pretty high on this power ladder. let us assume further that lisp is more powerful than python (i think that's safe. in this forum anyways). so to say that python readability makes lisp blub sort of implies python is blub to you. unless, of course, you think python is more powerful than lisp.

my question is, what leads people to believe lisp is so high up on the language power scale?

ps: incidentally, macros are all about readability. if you took all the macros out of your program and substituted them by their macro expansion (by copying and pasting) you would end up with exactly the same program. exactly. it would just be less readable ;)

Yes, but good coding and powerful languages are all about readability. You could write everything in assembly, after all.

You would get the same phenotype. But far from the same genotype.

So measured by what the programs do - they are the same. Measured by how well you can evolve the program, the not-expanded version will probably fare better.

you and http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=stcredzero are getting off on a tangent. the original post was: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=279062.

I assumed the definition of blub from the original PG essay, which argues that Lisp is near or at the top of the power scale.

I don't really believe in a linear power scale though. Some languages are strictly more powerful than others, but there are also (i believe) different axes of power. I mention Haskell, Lisp and Python because they are three very powerful languages, but powerful in different ways. If you think that any one of them are strictly more powerful than the others, then its probably because you don't understand the power of the other.

i don't know what you mean. could you provide an example? let's take lisp and python. in which "axis" is python more powerful and how? (i'm talking about core language features).

The power of Python is a consequence of a design with focus on clarity, readability and consistency. GvR understands that code is as much communication to humans as instructions to the computer, and that code is read much more than written. This makes the language very productive, but is especially valuable when you have to read or maintain code written by others. It is easier to learn from each others code and libraries.

Related languages like Perl or Lisp with a focus on TMTOWTDI are more immediately gratifying because you can easier tailor the look of the language to your personal preferences. This however have a long term cost to maintainability and sharing in the community.

The power of Python is an emergent property caused by readability and clarity combined with the network effect in the community.

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