Computer scientists emphasize the value of conciseness of expression in problem solving. Unix pioneer Ken Thompson once famously stated, “One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.” This is a worthy goal on any software project requiring ongoing support and maintenance, yet can be lost by a focus on software development metrics like lines-of-code. Early Lisp contributor Paul Graham went as far as to equate succinctness in a programming language with its power.
