Language Size (was Re: [TLUG]: ECMAScript ("Javascript") Version 4 - FALSE ALARM)

[Harri Porten]

Hi!

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> Does anyone else have other ideas for objective metrics of language
> size?

"Compilation time" - of course not that objective as heavily 
implementation specific but still an indicator for the complexity of the 
language :)

But seriously: from my own work on an ES4 interpreter (based on the 
previous draft back then) I saw the biggest impact on the implementation 
to be in the "compilation phase". This went hand in the hand with the 
*advantages* of the type system, i.e. the possibility to apply 
optimizations before execution.

In my personal book I therefore judge the complexity of a language also 
based on the observation whether runtime implementations typically include 
a compiler, i.e. offer an eval() function or not.

Harri.