It's easier to formally reason about a program that is specified in a small formal language than one that is sloppy, big, and leaks state, yes. When you can formally reason about a program you can prove correctness. And that's the ultimate goal.
Minified JavaScript is not a fair comparison either. You can write scheme and lisp programs that are very readable. It annoys me when people conflate a terse and/or illegible programming style with functional programming.
We have abstractions and large languages so that humans can better understand the intent of a program. Isn't that exactly what this post is about, making a more readable lambda calculus interpreter?
Minified JavaScript is not a fair comparison either. You can write scheme and lisp programs that are very readable. It annoys me when people conflate a terse and/or illegible programming style with functional programming.
We have abstractions and large languages so that humans can better understand the intent of a program. Isn't that exactly what this post is about, making a more readable lambda calculus interpreter?