6 ms·

“Swift is the only language I could find with over 100 keywords”

29 points by alexobenauer 5y ago

vb6sp6 5y ago
VB6 has close to 300 And while some vb6 code is truly terrible, it isn't because of keywords. It's because beginners have no idea what they are doing. So I imagine Swift code may be terrible because there are a lot of noobs out there doing whatever it takes to ship.
blacktriangle 5y ago
I don't think this is fair to Swift. Swift seems to have taken a view that the langauge will force you to be explicit about what you want. For example, the "indirect" keyword. Early Swift did not let you have recursive enums, apparently this can be something of a performance killer I guess was the reasoning. However they are really useful, so Swift added them. However rather than just automatically using an indirect Enum which is easily detectible, Swift forces you to use the "indirect" keyword. Rather than implicitly doing work for you, the Swift compiler stops to ask "are you sure this is what you really want to do? Do you understand the tradeoffs you are making?" Personally I'm a fan of the Swift approach even if it does balloon the keyword count a bit.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  I feel it's better to add keywords like that than to over load keywords based on context. See the keyword const in C/C++. Also better to trust the end used to decide what trade offs they want to make. For instance code that converts a user click to a database query, clean and understandable is more important than performance. If it takes 10ns or 10ms the user ain't going to know the difference.
mmphosis 5y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1420950032669286402.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1420950032669286402.html
hpen 5y ago
And yet code in Swift is much cleaner than anything in Javascript. I say that having mostly written Swift & Javascript at my jobs and on the side.
- philwelch 5y ago
  JS is a fairly low bar to compare other programming languages to.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - igouy 5y ago
    And used by many, so useful to compare to?
    - addicted 5y ago
      It’s only used by many because it’s the only scripting language on the web browser, and not due to anything intrinsic to the language. So it’s popularity tells us nothing about the language, and more about the fact that it’s the only language on the most popular platform. So I’m not sure comparing any language to JS is useful to learn about the language.
      - igouy 5y ago
        It’s popularity tells us many people will be able to relate to that comparison.
    - philwelch 5y ago
      It's less useful when you realize that almost every other widely used programming language is better than JavaScript.
  - hpen 5y ago
    The point was to compare a "simpler" language
wdb 5y ago
Yeah, the design by committee approach of Swift isn't helping either. There are some weird language decisions being made
eesmith 5y ago
Depending on how you count keywords, SQL has over 400. See https://github.com/ballista-compute/sqlparser-rs/blob/main/src/dialect/keywords.rs https://github.com/ballista-compute/sqlparser-rs/blob/main/s... . SQLite has 147 keywords - https://www.sqlite.org/lang_keywords.html https://www.sqlite.org/lang_keywords.html .
- nn3 5y ago
  COBOL has over 300 too
  - eesmith 5y ago
    I count 417 reserved words at https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/iis/9.1?topic=words-cobol-reserved https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/iis/9.1?topic=words-cobol-reserv... . I see there's "ZERO", "ZEROES", and "ZEROS" - I didn't realize that both plurals are acceptable in English! - https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3824/what-is-the-plural-form-of-zero https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3824/what-is-the... . My favorite reserved word on that list is "KANJI". From https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/4.2?topic=expressions-class-condition https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/4.2?topic=expressions-... : > The class condition determines whether the content of a data item is alphabetic, alphabetic-lower, alphabetic-upper, numeric, DBCS, KANJI, or contains only the characters in the set of characters specified by the CLASS clause as defined in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph of the environment division.
BooneJS 5y ago
SystemVerilog (IEEE 1800-2017) has 248.
ksaj 5y ago
I'm pretty sure Common Lisp has well over 100 keywords.
- kevincox 5y ago
  Can you give some examples? IIUC there are builtins (macros/functions that couldn't be expressed in the language) but no keywords. There are lots of syntax elements that could be keywords like ' (quoting) but I am not aware of any true keywords.
  - xedrac 5y ago
    All special forms (if, let, progv, etc...) are very similar to keywords in other languages. But there's only a couple dozen of them. From Wikipedia: "Some Lisp control structures are special operators, equivalent to other languages' syntactic keywords."
    - kevincox 5y ago
      Personally I don't think that really counts. IIUC you can override those names, so they aren't reserved, and you can implement any one of these as a macro so you don't need to remember anything outside of the core language. (You can't implement them all as macros, but IIRC there are disjoint built-in sets that can give you the full behaviour)
      - xedrac 5y ago
        Sure. I think the point he was trying to make is that some languages are more complex than others. And in that context, the fact that Lisp has the flexibility to override just about anything actually makes the language more complex. Because now you can't make any assumptions about anything. In some ways Lisp is the most complex language in existence because it encompasses an infinite number of sub languages (ergo Racket's tagline "The programmable programming language"). In other ways it's the most simple language ever.
Zababa 5y ago
56 keywords in OCaml, 99 total if you count the character sequences. Maybe a better metric would be "keywords uses regularly"?. https://ocaml.org/manual/lex.html#sss:keywords https://ocaml.org/manual/lex.html#sss:keywords
cweill 5y ago
I don't see golang on that chart. It must be close to C (on the lower end).
xq3000 5y ago
Smalltalk80 wins with only 6 keywords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk

29 points by alexobenauer 5y ago

VB6 has close to 300 And while some vb6 code is truly terrible, it isn't because of keywords. It's because beginners have no idea what they are doing. So I imagine Swift code may be terrible because there are a lot of noobs out there doing whatever it takes to ship.

blacktriangle 5y ago

I don't think this is fair to Swift. Swift seems to have taken a view that the langauge will force you to be explicit about what you want. For example, the "indirect" keyword. Early Swift did not let you have recursive enums, apparently this can be something of a performance killer I guess was the reasoning. However they are really useful, so Swift added them. However rather than just automatically using an indirect Enum which is easily detectible, Swift forces you to use the "indirect" keyword. Rather than implicitly doing work for you, the Swift compiler stops to ask "are you sure this is what you really want to do? Do you understand the tradeoffs you are making?" Personally I'm a fan of the Swift approach even if it does balloon the keyword count a bit.

Gibbon1 5y ago
I feel it's better to add keywords like that than to over load keywords based on context. See the keyword const in C/C++. Also better to trust the end used to decide what trade offs they want to make. For instance code that converts a user click to a database query, clean and understandable is more important than performance. If it takes 10ns or 10ms the user ain't going to know the difference.

mmphosis 5y ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1420950032669286402.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1420950032669286402.html

hpen 5y ago

And yet code in Swift is much cleaner than anything in Javascript. I say that having mostly written Swift & Javascript at my jobs and on the side.

philwelch 5y ago
JS is a fairly low bar to compare other programming languages to.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- igouy 5y ago
  And used by many, so useful to compare to?
  - addicted 5y ago
    It’s only used by many because it’s the only scripting language on the web browser, and not due to anything intrinsic to the language. So it’s popularity tells us nothing about the language, and more about the fact that it’s the only language on the most popular platform. So I’m not sure comparing any language to JS is useful to learn about the language.
    - igouy 5y ago
      It’s popularity tells us many people will be able to relate to that comparison.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    It's less useful when you realize that almost every other widely used programming language is better than JavaScript.
- hpen 5y ago
  The point was to compare a "simpler" language

wdb 5y ago

Yeah, the design by committee approach of Swift isn't helping either. There are some weird language decisions being made

eesmith 5y ago

Depending on how you count keywords, SQL has over 400. See https://github.com/ballista-compute/sqlparser-rs/blob/main/src/dialect/keywords.rs https://github.com/ballista-compute/sqlparser-rs/blob/main/s... . SQLite has 147 keywords - https://www.sqlite.org/lang_keywords.html https://www.sqlite.org/lang_keywords.html .

nn3 5y ago
COBOL has over 300 too
- eesmith 5y ago
  I count 417 reserved words at https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/iis/9.1?topic=words-cobol-reserved https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/iis/9.1?topic=words-cobol-reserv... . I see there's "ZERO", "ZEROES", and "ZEROS" - I didn't realize that both plurals are acceptable in English! - https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3824/what-is-the-plural-form-of-zero https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3824/what-is-the... . My favorite reserved word on that list is "KANJI". From https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/4.2?topic=expressions-class-condition https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/4.2?topic=expressions-... : > The class condition determines whether the content of a data item is alphabetic, alphabetic-lower, alphabetic-upper, numeric, DBCS, KANJI, or contains only the characters in the set of characters specified by the CLASS clause as defined in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph of the environment division.

BooneJS 5y ago

SystemVerilog (IEEE 1800-2017) has 248.

ksaj 5y ago

I'm pretty sure Common Lisp has well over 100 keywords.

kevincox 5y ago
Can you give some examples? IIUC there are builtins (macros/functions that couldn't be expressed in the language) but no keywords. There are lots of syntax elements that could be keywords like ' (quoting) but I am not aware of any true keywords.
- xedrac 5y ago
  All special forms (if, let, progv, etc...) are very similar to keywords in other languages. But there's only a couple dozen of them. From Wikipedia: "Some Lisp control structures are special operators, equivalent to other languages' syntactic keywords."
  - kevincox 5y ago
    Personally I don't think that really counts. IIUC you can override those names, so they aren't reserved, and you can implement any one of these as a macro so you don't need to remember anything outside of the core language. (You can't implement them all as macros, but IIRC there are disjoint built-in sets that can give you the full behaviour)
    - xedrac 5y ago
      Sure. I think the point he was trying to make is that some languages are more complex than others. And in that context, the fact that Lisp has the flexibility to override just about anything actually makes the language more complex. Because now you can't make any assumptions about anything. In some ways Lisp is the most complex language in existence because it encompasses an infinite number of sub languages (ergo Racket's tagline "The programmable programming language"). In other ways it's the most simple language ever.

Zababa 5y ago

56 keywords in OCaml, 99 total if you count the character sequences. Maybe a better metric would be "keywords uses regularly"?. https://ocaml.org/manual/lex.html#sss:keywords https://ocaml.org/manual/lex.html#sss:keywords

cweill 5y ago

I don't see golang on that chart. It must be close to C (on the lower end).

xq3000 5y ago

Smalltalk80 wins with only 6 keywords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk