8. Minilanguages: Finding a Notation That Sings
A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times makes it almost seem like a live teacher.
The World of Mathematics (1956) —Bertrand Russell
One of the most consistent results from large-scale studies of error patterns in software is that programmer error rates in defects per hundreds of lines are largely independent of the language in which the programmers are coding.1 Higher-level languages, which allow you to get more done in fewer lines, mean fewer bugs as well.
1 Les Hatton reports by email on the analysis in his book in preparation, Software Failure: “Provided you use executable line counts for the density measure, the injected defect densities vary less between languages ...
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