I was looking at code.golf the other day and I wondered which languages were the least verbose, so I did a little data gathering.

I looked at 48 different languages that had completed 79 different code challenges on code.golf. I then gathered the results for each language and challenge. If a “golfer” had more than 1 submission to a challenge, I grabbed the most recent one. I then dropped the top 5% and bottom 5% to hopefully mitigate most outliers. Then came up with an average for each language, for each challenge. I then averaged the results across each language and that is what you see here.

For another perspective, I ranked each challenge then got the average ranking across all challenges. Below is the results of that.

Disclaimer: This is in no way scientific. It’s just for fun. If you know of a better way to sort these results please let me know.

    • GarytheSnail
      5·
      1 year ago

      String IDontKnowWhatsWorseEspeciallyWhenTheTypeIsAlsoIncludedString = “I don’t know what’s worse, especially when the type is also included”;

      • BlueBockser
        61·
        1 year ago

        Honestly, I prefer an overly long name over some cryptic naming scheme that looks like minified JS. At least you can be sure of the variable’s purpose and don’t have to guess, which is far better for readability.