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Asked: 2026-05-12T05:38:28+00:00

Is there an objective measure of a programming language’s complexity in terms of syntax

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Is there an objective measure of a programming language’s complexity in terms of syntax and semantics, not how complex the language is to use ?

I’ve read many subjective comments but little rigorous analysis.

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  1. Editorial Team

    Have a look at Denotational semantics and operational semantics:

    Denotational semantics is an approach to formalizing the meanings of programming languages by constructing mathematical objects (called denotations) which describe the meanings of expressions from the languages.

    The operational semantics for a programming language describes how a valid program is interpreted as sequences of computational steps. These sequences then are the meaning of the program. In the context of functional programs, the final step in a terminating sequence returns the value of the program. (In general there can be many return values for a single program, because the program could be nondeterministic, and even for a deterministic program there can be many computation sequences since the semantics may not specify exactly what sequence of operations arrives at that value.)

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