Re: Proposal: Proposals are the wrong approach [prose and long]

[Axel Kittenberger <axkibe@...>]

An observation: we tend to fixate on syntax because it's right in
front of us, everyday.  But ultimately it's thinking of general
mechanisms that moves us forward, thinking of better ways of reliably
working with hundreds of thousands of lines of code.  In those code
bases, the cleverness is in the design, not the coding.[3]  It's akin
to what Knuth was calling 'premature optimization' - going for
maximally expressive code (as if writing poetry) rather than settling
into the long haul (writing a novel)

Thanks for this, I think this should be emphasised. 

I've seen countless of discussion about what is the better coding languages where people post little snippets and who got less characters is considered more expressive. This cracks me up. Developing and maintaining a larger project is so much different on what the better snippet is.

Similar problem, people using "Lines of code" as measurement of complexity. Why do you need to do this? This is what results ins so ugly condensed code. If you need some kind of rule of thumb, use amount of tokens.

Also there was a thread here a short while ago like "in how few characters can you do this": I didn't post there, okay, its a sport, but it gets the wrong impression. Writing good code is not about the fewest characters.