Counting keywords

[Bill Baxter]

Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>>> The D programming language already has too many over-used keywords and
>>>> poorly chosen keywords.
>>> Some have also argued that it has too many keywords, period.
>>
>> I have not heard that comment from anyone.
> 
> I have.

I have too, like in comments about D from non-D users on Digg.  There 
seem to be some people who believe that number of keywords is directly 
related to the complexity of a language.  I think the line of reasoning 
goes: lisp has like 3 keywords; so if you need more than 3 keywords your 
language must be a crappy rat trap caving in under its own complexity.

Some people substitute "C" for "Lisp" or "elegance" for "simplicity".

Anyway, keyword count is a very silly way to choose a programming 
language.  I'll give you that lisp is small and elegant.  But once you 
get up to a C-ish number of keywords (~70?) there just ain't a whole lot 
of difference as long as what you're adding are not commonly used 
variable names like 'tmp' or 'value'.

Maybe someone else has better insight into the minds of these "keyword 
accountants" but from where I sit it just doesn't make a lot of sense to 
obsess over +/- a few dozen keywords in a C-like language.

--bb