Comment by runako | Hacker News Reader

Comment by runako | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Your point is valid, but you still miss the larger point you're replying to. Even without libraries, coding in C is going to require more lines of code than coding the same functionality in a higher-level language like Python. And lines of code correlate more or less evenly with time/effort/thought that goes into writing the code.

Crucially, this linkage does not depend on whether there are libraries for what you're trying to do or experience level in the language. If coding a particular feature takes 1000 lines of code in C vs. 100 in Python, you'd have to assert that a programmer can write (and maintain) code 10x faster in C than Python. Since roughly the same amount of conceptual energy goes into each line of code, this is tantamount to the assertion that a programmer writing C can think through concepts 10x faster than when the same programmer is writing Python.

There's a reason the field invented higher-level languages, and it doesn't entirely have to do with novice programmers.

Less lines of code does not equal more efficient code. A single C statement has almost a 1:1 correlation between underlying assembly when compiled, where as a single statement in a high level language usually consists of several assembly instructions.

I think the overarching point is experience with the language. I for one have seen and written incredibly long and convoluted programs in a high level language which was largely due to a weak understanding of the massive API's that come with it. And it would have taken roughly the same amount of time to read and understand what the API functions do and how to use them as it would in C.

In the end, it's all relative and it's totally dependent on experience with the language and what you need for your application.

This thread is about efficiency of the coding process, not the execution process. Nobody would argue that an arbitrary high-level language performs as well as the same code written C or hand-tuned assembly. The point of this discussion is that writing C or hand-tuned assembly takes more lines of code (and therefore thought) than writing the same code in a higher-level language.

So with this definition of efficiency, less lines of code does equal more efficient code.

I find that by far the most time/effort/thought goes into figuring out the overall structure of the algorithm I want to implement. Once I've sketched that out, translating it into lines of code is pretty much just typing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com