compact adj.
Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all
be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the
thing created from the design can be used with greater facility
and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact.
Compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for
example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful
than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting features and cruft that don't merge cleanly into the overall
design scheme (thus, some fans of Classic C maintain that ANSI C is no
longer compact).
Node:compiler jock, Next:compo, Previous:compact, Up:= C
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compiler jock n.
See jock (sense 2).